Connector for Outlook 2000

[davewilson]

Bummer. We're in the midst of evaluating four Outlook-compatible email servers that will run on Linux, and we've enjoyed a quick look at Zimbra.

It's really too bad I will have to drop Zimbra from our short list because it does not support Outlook 2000. Had I read the documentation more carefully (or thought to look for this thread) I suppose we would not have bothered to stage it for evaluation. Zimbra's orientation toward Outlook 2000 support really takes me by surprise, though - if a shop cared enough to spend the money to deploy Outlook 2003, why would they not simply back it up on the server side with Exchange?

I think the AJAX client is great, but I guess nobody at Zimbra has tried putting that in front of a regular old business CEO and proposing that he uninstall his Outlook client. Mine would laugh himself silly at the idea.

So close! Oh, well. At least there are others to try. I would like to offer the feedback, though, that there are customers out there for Zimbra if it chooses to support Outlook 2000. We really might have been one of them.

Regards,

Dave W.

[jdcarson]

We too were disappointed that the Outlook connector will not be available for Outlook 2000. We love the Zimbra web client; it does appear to be best of breed. But we need as much Outlook/Exchange functionality as possible.

Like many other current users of Exchange, we are looking to break the bonds. But we are moving from 5.5 and looking for a cost effective, open source solution. Upgrading to Outlook 2003 would cost us more than the server component. In my humble opinion, Outlook 2000 should have been the first version developed to connect. As Dave Wilson pointed out, If we had the latest and greatest version of Outlook in a corporate environment, why would we consider anything but Exchange?

It also seems that any organization smaller than 500 users will pay a premium for a high level of support, per user cost going from $28 to $88/year at the 50 user level. (Small business license +$3000 for the same level of support as a 500 user install) And this is an ongoing annual requirement. Too rich for our blood.

The scale has tilted in the direction of Scalix for us. (no pun intended). We will pay a little more up front, but ongoing support/upgrades will be a mere $600 ($12/user)for patches, upgrades, updates and training. There is a per incident fee for support, but it appears to be less than Zimbra's per incident rate(not sure; still investigating)

Best of luck to you folks; you have a good product with great potential, but it is not the best fit for us at present.

Jon D. Carson

[mpellatt]

Indeed, support for pre-2003 Outlook is a major issue for us as well. In addressing the needs of the SMB/SME market, the cost of upgrades is a major issue (and being called a dinosaur by Microsoft for not upgrading doesn't help, either.....)

Scalix does seem the most cost-effective solution. Bynari is spiked by its per-user charge if you go for for the AJAX client, and non-free-as-in-beer server if you only want IMAP/POP3. Scalix's pricing if you don't want Outlook access is very attractive.

The remaining issue it has is unencrypted data transfer (although the signin credentials are encrypted, and this does appear soluble with some messy stunnel work.

[jwhitfield]

KevinH, as you can see, I'm not the only one who finds the lack of an Outlook 2000 connector surprising. Being a cutting edge Linux e-mail server solution is simply not enough. You really have to reach out and, not only wow them, but also offer them a very compelling reason to switch. Low-cost is a big part of that. If you give small businesses the opportunity to switch with what they already have, you'll up the ante in a big way!

I've looked at Scalix and downloaded a demo. Although it looks like a pretty good package, I found it to be a bit too quirky from a browser compatibility point-of-view. Plus, the cost of licensing really isn't that much lower than Exchange 2003...not enough to convince the principals of my company. They want what everyone else is using (or so they think!).

In the end, they ended up purchasing the licensing for Exchange 2003 Enterprise and 75 client licenses (which, to my surprise, came with Outlook 2003 licenses at no extra cost!). Sigh! I really wanted Zimbra to work...honestly I did! It was an uphill battle at best!

[riso]

Out of curiosity, what is the market share of Office/Outlook 2000 vs XP & 2003 in the North American market? Anyone know?

riso

[KevinH]

Glad you got something that works with you. In general over time people will move to Outlook 2003. It's a good chunk of work for us to port our connector back to Outlook 2000. It's not surprising that there *are* people who don't want to move forward or can't for cost reasons etc. In general if people *must* use Outlook there's a good chance they'll keep or get current given enough time. For those that don't need Outlook then they have other offline solutions (IMAP/POP/ical/etc) and can use the Web UI for online.

We understand there are folks who would like an Outlook 2000 port. We hear that. Posting additional me-too's to this thread are nice but if you really want to make an impact give our sales team a call or drop them a note at sales@zimbra.com. Let them know the number of mailboxes/users in your org. This way they can put together a real estimate of what doing the work for Outlook 200 would give us. In general, the larger customer's(100's+) I've talked to either are on Outlook 2003 (or will be soon) or plan to utilize the webclient as the major client access point for their users.

Thanks again so much for all the posts we really *do* appreciate the feedback.

[Dsellinger]

Just wanted to chip in here.
We also still use office 2000 and therefore outlook 2000.
There has been no real reason to upgrade to 2003, and we arn't in any hurry to just spend money.
(Although at this point finding someone to sell us office 2000 licenses has been tough)

We are looking at alternatives like zimbra to add remote mail and calendar access to what we currently offer.
We have all the normal features of outlook with exchange, with an old MS server app called MSMail. (was included with win95 )
Our only reasons for "upgrading" are to add remote access, and try to lessen our MS reliance/expenses. But if exchange comes with outlook 2003 lic and has a decent web-app, then at $67 a seat (not per year) maybe it's not a bad investment.

[langs]

Outlook 2003 must be the thing in the US if most of the 100+ mailbox companies you're talking to are using it.

Here in Australia I can assure you that its not the case. My company has 450 mailboxes and 95% are outlook 2000. ONLY the very top management team uses 2003.

Zimbra really needs to do more for IT staff to get it in the door my General Manager is all over me about Zimbra at the moment as it's what I've converted him to, to the point he's done me the favor of booking an appointment for me to talk to a MS rep about exchange and OWA again.

I love Zimbra, I love the fact I could easily move the mail store to my SAN and it does every thing I want. Zimbra + some Firefox 2 addons is the bomb for me. Unfortunetly my management team hate the AJAX client they want Outlook and most of them are on 2000, not 2003.

Which bring me to my next question, atm I am using the open source version and it's been great in testing, can I simply buy 2003 outlook connectors for it without having to upgrade the server version?

There are a couple of niggles about the AJAX client but there are already known about and i believe will get fixed shortly.

I think one of the big issues all the open source / linux based solutions have is the OSS versions are great but as soon as you want the connector they charge stupidly to the point where we walk away can simply buy Exchange, no IT Manager has ever had to sell Exchange to management, they know it, they want it even if it's expensive, soon as I put another solution on the table even if it's only 80% the cost they say meh buy exchange.

Zimbra, Scalix etc etc all need to learn they are the new kids on the block and need to work very hard to get traction in the market and not price themselves out of the deal.

Also subscription licensing is plain stupid, we have an IT department for a reason if the company has a IT issue they are expected to fix it not go calling the vendor first time it fits the fan. We want a one off fee that gives us a right to use for as long as we want that version, with the option of paying an addional annual support fee.