what does a good e-mail client need ?
I was reading the cnet article on the need for a mail client to push forward DESKTOP LINUX *E-mail will be the most significant factor governing the uptake of Linux on the desktop, according to a new study. * The Desktop Linux Client Survey 2005, released this week by the Open Source Development Labs, found that the lack of a powerful e-mail application could hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop. Full story here: http://news.com.com/E-mail+crucial+to+future+of+desktop+Linux/2100-7344_3-5978465.html?part=rss&tag=5978465&subj=news What I wondered was what does an enterprise e-mail client do that's different from my thunderbird. Is it just the calender? is it notes. I have tried, and hated outlook, probably as I use just e-mail and dont like the complexity of all the other things, but what would happen in an enterprise situation. If you understand this article, can you explain what the novell and mozilla offerings will mean, and will this be the outlook killer. What does outlook do that so vital? Is this another case of its not the same, or are we really missing out on something? any enterprise experince that can help a tech like me understand this ? Is there a really good app for this, could something be done to solve this. After all e-mail is the number 1 app for the net, search is 2 and then web surfing. 2 and 3 are fine, are we missing the boat on 1? I thinks its sufficiently linux related. do we have the Guru's in the lug that could solve this?
Gavin Denby wrote:
I was reading the cnet article on the need for a mail client to push forward DESKTOP LINUX
*E-mail will be the most significant factor governing the uptake of Linux on the desktop, according to a new study. *
The Desktop Linux Client Survey 2005, released this week by the Open Source Development Labs, found that the lack of a powerful e-mail application could hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop.
Full story here: http://news.com.com/E-mail+crucial+to+future+of+desktop+Linux/2100-7344_3-5978465.html?part=rss&tag=5978465&subj=news
What I wondered was what does an enterprise e-mail client do that's different from my thunderbird. Is it just the calender? is it notes. I have tried, and hated outlook, probably as I use just e-mail and dont like the complexity of all the other things, but what would happen in an enterprise situation.
I don't claim to be a guru or anything, but I read a similar article yesterday which said basically the same thing, and I'm inclined to think that it reflects a general lack of information in the study itself. How is Evolution not comparable to Outlook? Outlook has more features (but then it's been around a lot longer), but not /better/ features. I prefer Evolution to Outlook, and I use Outlook every day as a crucial part of my job. Outlook 2003 is a horrible application; it's unresponsive, and if you have a slow Exchange server, running any kind of large request hangs the entire desktop (possibly Windows' fault, but whatever). Evolution is easy to use, has all the needed features I can think of (group calendars being the main one), integrates better into the Gnome desktop than Outlook does into Windows, and is definitely more usable (the Gnome HIG, in my opinion, has resulted in some good UI design choices in Evo that were never made in Outlook; compare entering contacts, for example). If Evo is lacking any features that are required by most corporate clients, I don't know what they are, but I'm sure they can be added pretty easily. I don't think Thunderbird or Kontact (although I haven't used Kontact myself; and I'm going from memory in assuming that it is the email component of KDE) offer a corporate-level email client, primarily because of calendering. But the question in my mind is, so what? Even if there's only one client that's good enough, as the article implies, why should that stop Linux adoption? Can you name more than one client on Windows? Is the lack of choice on Windows preventing businesses from choosing it? Besides, depending on what you want to do, there are several other corporate-level choices for email on Linux, the names of which I /all/ forget now. I saw a demo for one fairly recently; a web-based email and calendaring application with features for organizing your mail that blew the pants off Outlook. To me, it looks like the article is focused a bit wrong. It suggests that Linux doesn't compete well in the email arena, whereas I think what the study was suggesting is that people's perception is that Linux is not quite as ready for corporate email as Windows, or that it doesn't offer anything /over/ Windows. And, no doubt many improvements can be made, and /should/ be made, as email is the number 1 app. The more edge that Linux has, the better. I can think of a number of features I'd implement in Evolution that would make corporate types ooh and aah and never want to look at Outlook again. Just my rather more spewy-than-expected thoughts. Regards, Bnonn
Gavin Denby wrote:
I was reading the cnet article on the need for a mail client to push forward DESKTOP LINUX
*E-mail will be the most significant factor governing the uptake of Linux on the desktop, according to a new study. *
The Desktop Linux Client Survey 2005, released this week by the Open Source Development Labs, found that the lack of a powerful e-mail application could hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop.
Full story here: http://news.com.com/E-mail+crucial+to+future+of+desktop+Linux/2100-7344_3-5978465.html?part=rss&tag=5978465&subj=news
What I wondered was what does an enterprise e-mail client do that's different from my thunderbird. Is it just the calender? is it notes. I have tried, and hated outlook, probably as I use just e-mail and dont like the complexity of all the other things, but what would happen in an enterprise situation.
If you understand this article, can you explain what the novell and mozilla offerings will mean, and will this be the outlook killer. What does outlook do that so vital?
Is this another case of its not the same, or are we really missing out on something?
any enterprise experince that can help a tech like me understand this ?
I'm not an expert in Outlook, but reading the article I can see the sort of thing that's being referred to. It's not email per se, but the groupware side that's lacking. One example - the ability to schedule a meeting at a time when all particpants are free and then put it in their calendars - all without the participants having to do anything. Centralised address lists, public folders etc are other examples. In other words, it's all the centralised stuff which is managed by Exchange. Corporations, of course, like centrally managed systems. Michael
Michael McDonald wrote:
I'm not an expert in Outlook, but reading the article I can see the sort of thing that's being referred to. It's not email per se, but the groupware side that's lacking. One example - the ability to schedule a meeting at a time when all particpants are free and then put it in their calendars - all without the participants having to do anything.
Afaik, Outlook is able to do this.
Centralised address lists, public folders etc are other examples.
Centralized address lists are supported; I'm not sure about public folders.
I'm not an expert in Outlook, but reading the article I can see the sort of thing that's being referred to. It's not email per se, but the groupware side that's lacking. One example - the ability to schedule a meeting at a time when all particpants are free and then put it in their calendars - all without the participants having to do anything.
Centralised address lists, public folders etc are other examples.
In other words, it's all the centralised stuff which is managed by Exchange. Corporations, of course, like centrally managed systems.
Michael
I agree it is the groupware & collaboration features that corporations like. MS Exchange & Open-Xchange support all this (and I believe Groupwise does too?). Mozilla has Thunderbird for email and Sunbird for Calendaring both of which work with the above two systems. Outlook and Evolution however have the convenience of having them combined into the one client. I like Evolution, although the last time I trialled it in a business environment it was with Exchange, and even with the Exchange Connector it didn't co-operate smoothly with the server. But I expect that will improve over time. Does anyone know if there are any plans to port it to Windows? Jodi -- DISCLAIMER: This electronic message together with any attachments is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, do not copy, disclose or use the contents in any way. Please also advise us by return e-mail that you have received the message and then please destroy. Turbo Investments Group Ltd is not responsible for any changes made to this message and / or any attachments after sending by Turbo Investments Group Ltd. We use virus scanning software but exclude all liability for viruses or anything similar in this email or any attachment.
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 09:36 +1300, Jodi Thomson wrote:
Does anyone know if there are any plans to port it to Windows?
Yes, there is work under way to port it to windows and I think it's even in a mostly-working state. I think there is lots of exciting stuff happening in this area, especially around Hula and Zimbra. Cheers -- Matt Brown matt(a)mattb.net.nz Mob +64 275 611 544 www.mattb.net.nz
Matt Brown wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 09:36 +1300, Jodi Thomson wrote:
Does anyone know if there are any plans to port it to Windows?
Yes, there is work under way to port it to windows and I think it's even in a mostly-working state.
I think there is lots of exciting stuff happening in this area, especially around Hula and Zimbra.
Cheers
Awesome. I do like the look of Zimbra. It's about time MS Exchange started seeing some serious competition Jodi -- DISCLAIMER: This electronic message together with any attachments is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, do not copy, disclose or use the contents in any way. Please also advise us by return e-mail that you have received the message and then please destroy. Turbo Investments Group Ltd is not responsible for any changes made to this message and / or any attachments after sending by Turbo Investments Group Ltd. We use virus scanning software but exclude all liability for viruses or anything similar in this email or any attachment.
I'm not an expert in Outlook, but reading the article I can see the sort of thing that's being referred to. It's not email per se, but the groupware side that's lacking. One example - the ability to schedule a meeting at a time when all particpants are free and then put it in their calendars - all without the participants having to do anything.
Centralised address lists, public folders etc are other examples.
Central address lists are easy to solve with an LDAP server. Anyone with the correct rights to the "Contacts" tree (ou) of the LDAP database can add and edit contacts. The LDAP server can also manage all the mail logins. If you run a decent IMAP server (Cyrus for example) you can also manage public mail folders. The only thing that is lacking on the Mail Server side is an "integrated solution". There are some promising web administration projects (coming out of US Uni's with deployments with more than 20,000 users) for Cyrus though. This doesn't solve the calendar server problem though. A project like Hula might be a good solution for that. Companies want a point and click solution. There is a good opportunity for an Open Source solution based "mail application server appliance". Some enterprising people could make some good money by providing a box that companies just "plug in" and get a good mail/calendaring/contacts system. Need more capacity? Just add another appliance. This is what Barracuda Networks are doing very effectively in the spam filtering space. Regards
In other words, it's all the centralised stuff which is managed by Exchange. Corporations, of course, like centrally managed systems.
Companies want a point and click solution. There is a good opportunity for an Open Source solution based "mail application server appliance". Some enterprising people could make some good money by providing a box that companies just "plug in" and get a good mail/calendaring/contacts system. Need more capacity? Just add another appliance. This is what Barracuda Networks are doing very effectively in the spam filtering space.
I'd add instant messaging to the mix as well :)
I'll throw in integrated/shared 'Tasks' as well: A customer rings up, salesperson-1 answers. The customer wants to know something a little more technical about a product than salesperson-1 is capable of answering, so salesman-1 creates a Task and assigns it to a techie to either: a) ring the client back (using the contact details which salesperson-1 entered directly into the integrated system) and pass on the technical info OR b) use the integrated IM system to pass the info on to the salesperson-1 who can get back to the client. After sleeping on it, the customer decides to buy xyz product, based on the quality information snappily provided by salesman-1 via the Tasks system. Salesman-1 is away sick the following day, and salesman-2 notices that there is still an incomplete Task - he checks the associated correspondence, and contacts the customer, who completes the transaction. Salesman-2 forwards the relevant purchases etc through the integrated accounting system to Dispatch for packaging and delivery. The next day, salesman-1 returns and checks status of order - discovers that salesman-2 had sorted it, and that customer has no complain of product. All without a trace of those sneaky yellow notes with glue-like substance on the back that seem to multiply all over your monitor when your back is turned... Elroy. Perry Lorier wrote:
Barracuda Networks are doing very effectively in the spam filtering space.
I'd add instant messaging to the mix as well :)
Sounds like you work in marketing ;P Is this a sales pitch? On Fri, 2006-05-26 at 21:28 +1200, Elroy wrote:
I'll throw in integrated/shared 'Tasks' as well:
A customer rings up, salesperson-1 answers.
The customer wants to know something a little more technical about a product than salesperson-1 is capable of answering, so salesman-1 creates a Task and assigns it to a techie to either:
a) ring the client back (using the contact details which salesperson-1 entered directly into the integrated system) and pass on the technical info
OR
b) use the integrated IM system to pass the info on to the salesperson-1 who can get back to the client.
After sleeping on it, the customer decides to buy xyz product, based on the quality information snappily provided by salesman-1 via the Tasks system.
Salesman-1 is away sick the following day, and salesman-2 notices that there is still an incomplete Task - he checks the associated correspondence, and contacts the customer, who completes the transaction.
Salesman-2 forwards the relevant purchases etc through the integrated accounting system to Dispatch for packaging and delivery.
The next day, salesman-1 returns and checks status of order - discovers that salesman-2 had sorted it, and that customer has no complain of product.
All without a trace of those sneaky yellow notes with glue-like substance on the back that seem to multiply all over your monitor when your back is turned...
Elroy.
Perry Lorier wrote:
Barracuda Networks are doing very effectively in the spam filtering space.
I'd add instant messaging to the mix as well :)
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Sounds like what you want is a CRM. Check out SugarCRM. www.sugarcrm.com. MySQL, PHP, etc. OpenSource (but with commercial version). Regards Dominic Tennant wrote:
Sounds like you work in marketing ;P Is this a sales pitch?
On Fri, 2006-05-26 at 21:28 +1200, Elroy wrote:
I'll throw in integrated/shared 'Tasks' as well:
A customer rings up, salesperson-1 answers.
The customer wants to know something a little more technical about a product than salesperson-1 is capable of answering, so salesman-1 creates a Task and assigns it to a techie to either:
a) ring the client back (using the contact details which salesperson-1 entered directly into the integrated system) and pass on the technical info
OR
b) use the integrated IM system to pass the info on to the salesperson-1 who can get back to the client.
After sleeping on it, the customer decides to buy xyz product, based on the quality information snappily provided by salesman-1 via the Tasks system.
Salesman-1 is away sick the following day, and salesman-2 notices that there is still an incomplete Task - he checks the associated correspondence, and contacts the customer, who completes the transaction.
Salesman-2 forwards the relevant purchases etc through the integrated accounting system to Dispatch for packaging and delivery.
The next day, salesman-1 returns and checks status of order - discovers that salesman-2 had sorted it, and that customer has no complain of product.
All without a trace of those sneaky yellow notes with glue-like substance on the back that seem to multiply all over your monitor when your back is turned...
Elroy.
Perry Lorier wrote:
Barracuda Networks are doing very effectively in the spam filtering space.
I'd add instant messaging to the mix as well :)
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_______________________________________________ wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
At 21:28 26/05/2006, you wrote:
I'll throw in integrated/shared 'Tasks' as well: A customer rings up, salesperson-1 answers.
<snip>
All without a trace of those sneaky yellow notes with glue-like substance on the back that seem to multiply all over your monitor when your back is turned...
This one's well-baked. Find it here: http://www.salesforce.com/ _____________________________ David Hallett, BSc, MNZCS Managing Director Pulsar Computer Solutions Ltd P.O. Box 15-516, Hamilton, New Zealand Mob: +64-21-802 256 Fax: +64-7-846 3677 www.pulsar.net.nz
This "story" is basically paraphrasing a press release put out by the OSDL. One of the survey items was what application was most important to corporate IT people. The response was that Email was the killer app. Like DUH! We new that. Some hack at ZDNet has repackaged this PR on the survey and added this spin that Linux is somehow lacking in the email client department which is just plain wrong. Evo does 80% of what most business people need (and it works with Exchange). Products like Zimba look even better and being browser based is even better than a fat client. Firefox, AJAX and the like are finally delivery truely rich browser based applications that are based on open standards. This rocks. If you're interested in other interesting AJAX apps (wiki's) check out www.jotlive.com (use BugMeNot to login). Regards Gavin Denby wrote:
I was reading the cnet article on the need for a mail client to push forward DESKTOP LINUX
*E-mail will be the most significant factor governing the uptake of Linux on the desktop, according to a new study. *
The Desktop Linux Client Survey 2005, released this week by the Open Source Development Labs, found that the lack of a powerful e-mail application could hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop.
Full story here: http://news.com.com/E-mail+crucial+to+future+of+desktop+Linux/2100-7344_3-5978465.html?part=rss&tag=5978465&subj=news
What I wondered was what does an enterprise e-mail client do that's different from my thunderbird. Is it just the calender? is it notes. I have tried, and hated outlook, probably as I use just e-mail and dont like the complexity of all the other things, but what would happen in an enterprise situation.
If you understand this article, can you explain what the novell and mozilla offerings will mean, and will this be the outlook killer. What does outlook do that so vital?
Is this another case of its not the same, or are we really missing out on something?
any enterprise experince that can help a tech like me understand this ?
Is there a really good app for this, could something be done to solve this. After all e-mail is the number 1 app for the net, search is 2 and then web surfing. 2 and 3 are fine, are we missing the boat on 1?
I thinks its sufficiently linux related.
do we have the Guru's in the lug that could solve this?
_______________________________________________ wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
This article also contains an error (1 character but has important repercussions).
The belief that Linux is mainly used as a developer tool was shattered by the survey, which cited employer demand as the top reason for adoption, closely followed by the need to keep up with competitors using Linux. The actual survey report states: The top reasons for deploying Linux on the desktop (listed in order): . Employees requesting Linux (user demand) Ie, Employe*e* demand not employe*r*.
One often has to fact check Ziff Davis. They've never been renowned for their accuracy or intelligence. Regards Oliver Jones wrote:
This "story" is basically paraphrasing a press release put out by the OSDL. One of the survey items was what application was most important to corporate IT people. The response was that Email was the killer app. Like DUH! We new that.
Some hack at ZDNet has repackaged this PR on the survey and added this spin that Linux is somehow lacking in the email client department which is just plain wrong. Evo does 80% of what most business people need (and it works with Exchange). Products like Zimba look even better and being browser based is even better than a fat client.
Firefox, AJAX and the like are finally delivery truely rich browser based applications that are based on open standards. This rocks.
If you're interested in other interesting AJAX apps (wiki's) check out www.jotlive.com (use BugMeNot to login).
Regards
Gavin Denby wrote:
I was reading the cnet article on the need for a mail client to push forward DESKTOP LINUX
*E-mail will be the most significant factor governing the uptake of Linux on the desktop, according to a new study. *
The Desktop Linux Client Survey 2005, released this week by the Open Source Development Labs, found that the lack of a powerful e-mail application could hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop.
Full story here: http://news.com.com/E-mail+crucial+to+future+of+desktop+Linux/2100-7344_3-5978465.html?part=rss&tag=5978465&subj=news
What I wondered was what does an enterprise e-mail client do that's different from my thunderbird. Is it just the calender? is it notes. I have tried, and hated outlook, probably as I use just e-mail and dont like the complexity of all the other things, but what would happen in an enterprise situation.
If you understand this article, can you explain what the novell and mozilla offerings will mean, and will this be the outlook killer. What does outlook do that so vital?
Is this another case of its not the same, or are we really missing out on something?
any enterprise experince that can help a tech like me understand this ?
Is there a really good app for this, could something be done to solve this. After all e-mail is the number 1 app for the net, search is 2 and then web surfing. 2 and 3 are fine, are we missing the boat on 1?
I thinks its sufficiently linux related.
do we have the Guru's in the lug that could solve this?
_______________________________________________ wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
_______________________________________________ wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
participants (10)
-
Bnonn -
David Hallett -
Dominic Tennant
-
Elroy -
Gavin Denby -
Jodi Thomson -
Matt Brown -
Michael McDonald -
Oliver Jones -
Perry Lorier