Alternatives to Network Edition ActiveSync

[yonatan]

I've have an NE version 6 server that's using the free 10 user license that was available with the zimbra appliance (now MIA).

I want to upgrade to version 7, but I read some where that my license will no longer work. This means I can either pay for the NE starter pack or go to the OSE.

If I move to the OSE I'll lose ActiveSync which would really suck.

There appears to be two main alternatives: Z-Push and ZeXtras Mobile Module.

What experience does anyone have with these two and how do they compare with Zimbra's NE ActiveSync?

Thanks

[lytledd]

I don't know about ZeXtras, but on my small home system, in which I run Zimbra 7.20 OSE on ESXi 5 Free, I have 3 users that use ActiveSync, 2 Android phones and 1 IPhone 4.

I use Z-Push for ActiveSync for phones and I use Funambol for my 1 user that insists using Outlook.

Doug

[yonatan]

I don't know about ZeXtras, but on my small home system, in which I run Zimbra 7.20 OSE on ESXi 5 Free, I have 3 users that use ActiveSync, 2 Android phones and 1 IPhone 4.

I use Z-Push for ActiveSync for phones and I use Funambol for my 1 user that insists using Outlook.

Doug

Hi Doug,

How is Z-Push working for you? Was it easy to install and setup? I guess you created a separate vm for Z-Push, right?

[federico.bertola]

How is Z-Push working for you? Was it easy to install and setup? I guess you created a separate vm for Z-Push, right?

Hi Yonatan,
I've used Z-push for many month last year, I chose it as it free but when I tried ZxMobile (the zextras' Activesync module), I saw that:

• it's more intergrated with zimbra,
• it can be managed by the zimbra admin console,
• it's written in java, like mailboxd and simple to install and setup
• it's well supported thru the official forums

So I guess that it can be more scalable and performant, expecially with hundreds of users of my enviroment.
In my case, I chose zextras because many users have had problems to configure the devices, most of times they try to set the "zimbra hostname" as activesync server, but in my enviroment Z-pust had another address (i.e. mobile.domain.com), so now I no need for another server (and I save my money with less amazon ec2 hosts).

[yonatan]

Hey Federico,

Thanks for sharing your experience! I'll have to look at ZxMobile in more detail.

[lytledd]

Hi Doug,

How is Z-Push working for you? Was it easy to install and setup? I guess you created a separate vm for Z-Push, right?

It's working very well, and it was pretty straight forward to setup. Yes, I created a separate VM for both z-push and funambol.

Doug

[soxfan]

Just as another point of reference, I am using z-push, with the zimbra backend, as well. Overall I thought it was relatively easy and straightforward to setup. I guess my only knock is that there is one HUGE thread here on the Zimbra forums that you have to search through to find info. There are a couple of other sites that have some info on setting it up, so it might be better to search for those first. Right now I am the only one in our company using this setup and it works great. However we are looking to migrate about 25-30 users over to Androids, so I will find out real soon about scalability.