What the users really need (Was An alternative to Exchange)

[Sandy Harris]

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 2:27 PM, Richard Brown <rich at cregy.co.uk> wrote:

> Clifford asked a very important question and although the other thread
> started to pull out some useful apps I thought I would answer Clifford
> in a different thread. Clifford said:
> *** Start ***
> Richard, a lot of people say they want an Exchange replacement but
> don't dig any deeper than that. What is it that your users need to do?
>..
> *** End ***
>
> So to explain.I have just started to manage the companies IT structure
> and it is totally disorganised. ...
> So a list of needs:
> 1. File server
> 2. Mail server - this would collect all mail and then redistribute it
> to the staff. They all have personal email addresses (i.e. john at ....)
> 3. A central place to host company bookmarks
> 4. A central address books that contain tags and categories for ease of use
> 5. A central calendar
> 6. A way to send notes to staff
> 7. A web server to serve an intranet

Have a look at Mitel's SME, Small & Medium Enterprise server
http://wiki.contribs.org/Main_Page
http://aplawrence.com/esmith.html

That's a LInux distro designed to do much of what you mention.
At least mail (using qmail), print server, and Samba file sharing.
Design goal is internal server for an office.

It is not designed to do firewalling or a public web server; those
belong on other machines. I'm not sure if it includes a web
server for local use, or what other features it has.

Note that it is a complete special-purpose distribution, not a
package you can add to Ubuntu. Also, it insists on full control
of the machine or security reasons; no dual boots.
-- 
Sandy Harris,
Quanzhou, Fujian, China