The state of open source groupware

Mail Call

With all the billions that corporations spend worldwide on groupware, market shares of just a few percent are enough for smaller suppliers to survive. In this article, we look at the latest developments in the open source groupware alternatives PostPath, Kerio, Kolab, Open-Xchange, Scalix, Tine 2.0, Zarafa, and Zimbra.

PostPath

Somewhat unlucky in its hunt for customers, PostPath [1] used to have quite a solid financial basis. Up until 2008, the team originating from Bulgaria and the United States developed a replica of Exchange that ran on Linux.

Cisco then whipped out its wallet and acquired PostPath for $215 million. Cisco's stated goal: to establish the software-as-a-service offering Cisco WebEx Mail as the counterpart to offers from Google and Microsoft.

Cisco also acquired the instant messaging pioneers Jabber Inc. a few weeks later. While Jabber lives on in Cisco communications products, WebEx Mail was counted out for good in February 2011. The terse comment from a manager at WebEx: "It didn't scale."

Kerio Connect

Kerio Technologies [2] started in 1997 as a distributor of network software; the first version of Kerio MailServer was launched in 2001. From Version 7 onward, the Californians referred to the product, which had in the meantime developed into groupware, as Kerio Connect (Figures 1 and 2).

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