Alternatives to Zimbra BES ??

[andyz]

IMHO, the Zimbra BES connector is a train wreck, and should never have been released.

The issues it has with calendar and contact sync could have been discovered by anyone with just a few minutes testing.

As a result, lots of people have wasted their time, and I have lost my trust that Zimbra is telling the truth with regards to a release date for a real production quality solution.

So for me, it's time to move on. My question is: what is the best alternative for OTA calendar / contact sync?

I've tried notify link - not a big fan. Funambol - too much hacking for me. Converting to gmail & using their new OTA calendar/contact sync tools - yes maybe...

Any other solutions??

[wagazarm]

Get a Windows smartphone? Sorry, I'm being sarcastic ...

I had such problems in the beginning but then this thing has become an absolute dream here at the office. I was using the Zimbra Mobile feature for my MotoQ, and then some of the Sr. Execs decided they all wanted Blackberrys. I wasn't excited about the extra work in having to support the BES, but it has made communication channels peak around here and on a much more stable phone.


The problem I'm having at the moment is that auto-reconciling doesn't seem to work all the time. However, I found it not too hard to hit the menu button and manually do it. We've not had any recent problems with calendars or contacts.

Are you experiencing any other problems than the calendar and contact sync?

[gnyce]

FWIW, the Zimbra BES connector doesn't work any worse for me when I had/supported the BES server for GroupWise (for 2 years). There would be times where the server would just stop working, and I'd have to reboot it. I am not sure if that is 'normal behavior' for this thing, but seemed to be par for the course. So I dont' notice any worse behavior running the BES for Exchange with Zimbra BES connector than what I had. Biggest problem right now seems to be, every so often, I have to restart services when either someone is not getting mail, or the GAL lookup stops working. But I have not tried the latest Beta, so some of that could be on me....

[andyz]

It sounds like the Zimbra BES connector is *working* for both of you - did I read that correctly ??

The problems I see are all with the calendar/contacts function. Email works fine - although with the BB I could use BIS which connects with any pop/imap server.

With calendar/contacts however, I see multiple address books, duplicate contacts, flaky sync behavior. Horrible.

If BES calendar/contacts are working for you, then perhaps the problem is with my hosting provider, 01.com...

Is there a hosting provider out there that has a working, production quality implementation of Zimbra BES ??

[wagazarm]

The only issues I've had with duplicates turned out to be all issues that weren't caused by the BES or Zimbra.

I'm also not using a hosting provider - our services are ran over a T1 provided by AT&T to my office. This allows me to make sure that I'm on the latest releases of Zimbra, the BES connector, and of course the BES itself.

As Gnyce pointed out, sometimes a reboot is just part of the plan.

Does 01.com let you know what version of Zimbra you are on? Is it an open-source edition, network edition? What version of the BES Connector are they on?

[gnyce]

Correct, it is working for us, have about 7-8 people on it. Yes, we are syncing mail, contacts, calendar.. if there were major issues, I dont' doubt our Sales personnel would let me know. Sorry, can't speak to hosting providers, as we have it running internally.

[ab5602]

We've been testing the BES/Zimbra integration for about 6 months so far and have not had any problems outside of what would normally occur in supporting BES/Exchange or BES/Groupwise.

We're planning on going live w/ several hundred BES/Zimbra users in January.

[Jedman]

Uh -- I am ready to deploy Zimbra to 50 users with 6 to 8 BlackBerry users. IMAP works fine but they also need calendar and contacts. What is the easiest way to do this? BES seems like overkill. NotifyLink looks OK, don't know the cost, but SQL seems excessive... what else is wrong with Notify?

[rduric]

I think you should purchase a BES server for Exchange which comes with 20 client licences. The Zimbra Connector for BlackBerry works well when you don't have too many BB users (25 or less per ZCB server).