Filed under: Internet Tools
Kerio MailServer provides Leopard-compatible groupware
When I posted about the Zimbra collaboration suite a little while ago, it was noted in the comments that, while the Zimbra client is now working in Safari 3, the server isn't yet Leopard-compatible. Kerio MailServer offers a Safari 3 and Leopard-compatible alternative with a lot of groupware functionality.
Kerio's Safari 3 compatibility stems mostly from the fact that it doesn't have a rich text editor in the client, but it works flawlessly for plain text email and the interface is as smooth and AJAXy as Zimbra's. Kerio has had a Mac version of the server since 2003, with drop-in Exchange replacement capability and the ability to sync contacts, calendars and email without the need for an external client. Kerio has even had iPhone sync since last Fall.
Kerio's pricing structure is slightly different from Zimbra's, but competitive; there's no open source Kerio version, as there is with Zimbra. But if you're in the market for a Leopard-based mail server and collaboration solution, Kerio seems to be a pretty good choice.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris said 12:23PM on 2-02-2008
For the technical, this means that Kerio 6.5 is in release candidate 2 (from the beta section) and means that it will support the CalDAV protocol used by Leopard Mail / AddressBook / iCal. CalDAV is already supported by Sunbird, the firefox equivalent of ical.
Also, why Kerio is better than OS X Server's built in mailserver? You don't have to write a custom script to do mail backup, archiving or sheduling. Also, it's built in spam detection features two levels of filtering (outright rejection + flag and pass to client) along with real time updates based on user behavior (the server can tell if you make a message as spam on the client, and will update its own database accordingly, same for false positives too).
I've migrated 30GB of Kerio mail between two servers in under an hour with no account or data lose. Not something that is easy to do with OS X Server.
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Keith said 1:16PM on 2-02-2008
"... the server isn't yet Leopard-compatible."
Quite to the contrary, if you go to the open source downloads page that you linked to in the article and look about halfway down the list, you will see a download for "MacOS X x86". The documentation also seems to have an appropriate section for installing on a Mac. See: http://www.zimbra.com/docs/os/latest/single_server_install/#1056945
All-be-it, I have not explicitly tried installing this myself, but it looks like the basic support is there.
Also to note, it looks like this is only for x86 Macs, so anyone still running a PPC server is out of luck.
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Brett Terpstra said 1:23PM on 2-02-2008
http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=21441
On Feb 1st it looks like Zimbra made an initial pass at 10.5 compatibility. There's information at the above link. Up until this point, to the best of my knowledge, it wasn't working. And not having tested the patch, I couldn't say if it is now. If anyone has tried it and it works, I'll quickly update the post :).
Michael Rose said 1:41PM on 2-02-2008
Keith, the bind that several Zimbra sites currently find themselves in is this:
a) 5.0 Zimbra server for OS X is Intel-only
b) it's currently only working on 10.4, not 10.5 (see Brett's bug report link)
Hence, in order to run the current server, you need to have an Intel machine that can run Tiger. You can't buy those in a server-friendly form factor anymore (at least not new), as the currently shipping XServes and Mac Pros have gone Leopard-only, and relatively few sites would be willing to go the route of buying older or refurb gear to run the server or running a mail server on consumer (iMac, Mac mini) hardware.
This may not have a huge impact on Zimbra adoption in Mac shops -- many may choose to run the server on Linux anyway, as that's the back-end they prefer to support, and undoubtedly the Zimbra team is working hard on 10.5 support -- but it's aggravating for Mac administrators who would like to spec Zimbra as a possible next-generation collaboration solution (like, say, me).
Besides, as Yahoo! owns Zimbra, soon Microsoft will own Zimbra, and soon after that, Zimbra may notice a rather marked decrease in its oxygen supply. :-(
nakedmac said 9:44PM on 2-02-2008
"it was noted in the comments"
It's OK to say that "it was noted in the comments by 'nakedmac'." :D
I haven't tried 5.0.2, but the support is still not officially there for Leopard install of the ZCS server. :(
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