Messaging
Most Windows IT Pro readers work
in Microsoft Exchange Server environments, so it's easy to forget that
viable alternatives to Exchange exist. For
small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs) in
particular, an easier-to-manage, less costly
mail server can make more sense than
having an onsite Exchange server that
requires IT resources and a budget that
SMBs typically lack. Enter Kerio Technologies' Kerio MailServer 6.1. The product,
which reviewer John Green designated
Editor's Choice in "Groupware Alternatives
to Microsoft Exchange" (August 2006,
InstantDoc ID 50597) and Michael Otey
praised in "Kerio MailServer 6.1" (February
2006, InstantDoc ID 48792) provides a
budget- and administration-friendly option
for SMBs that want to host their own email
services.
Kerio MailServer stands out especially
for its well-rounded feature set. It includes
just about everything you'd want for business email services—support for SMTP,
POP3, and IMAP; antispam and security
features such as Bayesian and content filtering, blacklists and whitelists, and reverse
DNS lookup; integration with Active Directory (AD); folder sharing; email address
aliases, two Web-based email clients
(including one for mobile devices); support
for Microsoft Outlook and Apple Macintosh
clients; and an Exchange migration tool. The
only feature missing from the product is IM.
The combination of price (Kerio
MailServer starts at a base price of $399
for 10 users) and business-email features convinced Roger McIlmoyle, director of technical services for TLC Vision,
to move from Exchange Server 5.5 to
Kerio MailServer rather than upgrade to
Exchange Server 2003. Roger investigated several products but chose Kerio
MailServer because it would work with
Outlook as well as the few Macintosh
users in his organization.
What made Roger choose Kerio? "It
just works," he says. Roger has two Kerio
MailServers running about 1,500 mailboxes and processing on average 40,000
email messages a day. He has seen users
send attachments as large as 1GB without
a hitch. In his opinion, "Performance for
price is just amazing."
—Anne Grubb and B. K. Winstead
Microsoft Products
In the past 12 months, Microsoft released
Windows Vista, Office 2007, Exchange 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
2007 (MOSS), Forefront Client Security 2007, System Center Operations
Manager 2007 (Ops Manager), System
Center Essentials (SCE), Windows Mobile
6, Intelligent Application Gateway 2007
(IAG), and Identity Lifecycle Manager
2007 (ILM). Selecting among these products to designate my Editor's Best is like
comparing apples, oranges, and Jupiter.
I was leaning toward picking MOSS on
the basis of its importance to the market,
value to customers, and the quality of its
technology. I asked for advice from readers of Vista UPDATE ("How Does Vista
Rank Among the Past Year's Microsoft
Releases?" InstantDoc ID 96088). Here's
what they said: "As soon as you add the
qualifier ‘provided the greatest value,' this
becomes a slam-dunk for MOSS (and
WSS). While Vista may eventually provide
great value to the industry, it's currently
relegated to more of a curiosity. Without
the MOSS integration features in Office
2007, it's just a new interface on an old
product. The others are either too limited
in their use or too new to tell," said reader
"hlx."
"Yep, MOSS is undoubtedly the biggest
‘mover and shaker' in IT (Microsoft's world
at least). It's going to be huge, in small and big businesses alike. The new SharePoint
Designer is also going to make the penetration of WSS / MOSS much deeper. And
it does provide the greatest value," reader
Paul Schnack said.
I did choose MOSS because it has
already had more impact on the market
than Microsoft's other recent releases.
Our publications can hardly keep up with
requests for MOSS content. In fact, by
popular demand, we've added an Office
and SharePoint section to this magazine,
and we've even launched a new Web site
at http://www.officesharepointpro.com.
Although MOSS's importance to the
market and value make it my choice, I
need to add a caveat. A reader called
"Goatie" provided the following perspective, which I've edited for length: "We're
upgrading our intranet and Internet sites
to MOSS. Whilst the product is fine, it
seems to still be rushed. Most of the table
and object documentation does not exist,
which makes customizing MOSS (what
it's billed as being the best for!) hit-andmiss. Until the developer documentation
appears in any usable quantity, I'd be
concerned if it was nominated as the
best product release of the year." Talk to
developers who are implementing MOSS,
and you'll find strange performance
issues with no documentation as to what
the components do and if it is doing it by
design or not. Counting the number of
people implementing the product is fine,
but a better measure is how successful
the implementations are.
—Karen Forster
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