Addon: Zimbra Integration With Samba - Ubuntu Based (Similar To AD And Exchange)

[c4rdinal]

Hi,

I am hoping that Ebox will soon be able to have a feature like Zimbra Integration With Samba - Ubuntu Based (Similar To AD And Exchange). Ebox will be full featured domain that can match Windows 2003 AD.

[javi]

Very interesting. Can you tell us a bit more what people usually use from Zimbra?

This kind of feedback is greatly appreciated

[x40sw0n]

Zimbra appears to be a corporate collaboration suite aimed at Groupwise and Exchange users. It supports all the major protocols (POP3, IMAP etc) as well as ical and more. It uses web front ends, and a server backend to do all the heavy lifting (ldap looks to figure heavily in it). Also it is supported by the major distros including ubuntu...

I suspect this would be as easy as someone logging into the root console and hitting apt for it. Though actual integration with ebox would be a bit more involved, or you could let it run independently. The only issue I can see is that it might demand the http port for the web front end which would probably conflict with ebox front end.

The mail services once it was set up though i would think would not interfere with ebox at all and could in fact use the same ldap user base that ebox is (since ldap would already be up and running theoretically).

[ominostanco]

@x40sw0n  I agree with you, Zimbra is a must have for corporate people who loves bells and whistles

[sh1ny]

Count my vote for zimbra integration also. Zimbra is a nice replacement ( and cheaper ) for MS Exchange and has everything needed for a corporate environment. I am testing on integrating zimbra with ebox through the zimbra external ldap authentication feature at the moment, but a ready-to-go solution would be nice !

[vitaliysh]

anyone actually succeeded with integration of zimbra + ebox? I would love to see more information on this topic

[aguerra]

I use it for 3 years and is excellent. 1 vote

[bellson]

Hello All,

Zimbra is a really good platform for Exchange replacement.  I have used it several times for that exact purpose.  I think the eBox Dev Team should look at it seriously.  The only issue is that Zimbra does not play well with others (applications in the same box).  In a vitual hosted environment, I think it would be fine, or in it's own server.  Resource wise, it really needs everything it can get.  Integration wise, I think it would be easier and faster to simply create eBox hooks to install it and integrate it into the LDAP schema. 

There will also be some uncertainty in the near term with Zimbra.  It has been bought up by VMware....They are going to want some return on their investment I would guess.

Aside from those concerns, making eBox "Zimbra ready" would be a great leap forward.

Does anybody have specific complaints with eGroupware in this role (Exchange replacement)?  I would like to hear about real-world issues in this regard.

Thanks,

Christopher J. Bell
CJ Technology Group, Inc.
Ventura, Ca. USA

[MMaI]

There will also be some uncertainty in the near term with Zimbra.  It has been bought up by VMware....They are going to want some return on their investment I would guess.

Aside from those concerns, making eBox "Zimbra ready" would be a great leap forward.

Does anybody have specific complaints with eGroupware in this role (Exchange replacement)?  I would like to hear about real-world issues in this regard.

Currently eGroupware is not even close to being a proper solution on the groupware market.
It's lacking a lot of key features like:
1. Templating support to create a professional looking main-page (the default is horrible)
2. a decent integrated mail client (which is the key in groupware)
3. support for synchronisation like syncML
4. usability for non-tech customers.

Additionally, Ubuntu has now put Zarafa into their repositories (http://www.zarafa.com/news/6-feb-zarafa-collaboration-platform-packaged-ubuntu-and-fedora) pointing out that this is finally a fully functional soluton.

I think the best possible way to integrate groupware solutions is by creating a module which will link to various possible groupware packages, rather then creating a new administration module.
This can then be used as a sign-on passthrough so you only will have to login once. For monitoring and mail setup you would need plugins/addons developed by the groupware developer or by users of certain groupware packages.

[Sam Graf]

For all it's faults, eGroupWare is closer to the "one stop shopping" cloud approach than any others I've seen so far. Admins wanting to offer teams something more than Outlook/Exchange--project management, resource scheduling, organization information repository, etc.--in a single package may find eGroupWare interesting.

That said, I like the idea of a "conduit" between eBox and one's preferred groupware solution. I'm not clear on how that would work, though. The eBox approach to service integration means tight eBox control of things like the mail server, so it's not clear to me how eBox can integrate itself seamlessly into other server environments on the network.

[francesco_r]

1. Templating support to create a professional looking main-page (the default is horrible)
2. a decent integrated mail client (which is the key in groupware)
3. support for synchronisation like syncML
4. usability for non-tech customers.

1. I don't think the default idots egroupware template is orribile (jerryr, the one shipped with ebox, i agree with you!), perhaps it's lack of nice ajax interface. But for this you must track the developmente of tine20 (http://www.tine20.org), a very promising fork from some of egroupware developers: 2.0 ui and integrated ActiveSync.
2. the felamimail module of egroupware it's not a perfect webmail client, but the html emails are displayed decently and you can also setup multiple accounts on a single user. And with ebox 1.4, now that dovecot support sieve filters, you can setup vacation reply and other rules directly inside egroupware.
3. eGroupware support natively SyncML, many of my customers use it regularly with Blackberrys and iPhones. The upcoming release 1.6.003 improve this supporting SyncML 1.2 (http://k.noc.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6&Itemid=8)
4. perhaps you are right here