InsightConnector - A Viable Exchange Alternative?

Fading Captain asks: "I'm sys-admin for a mid-size organization and have returned yet again to that fateful question: is Exchange the only viable groupware server in its class? Unfortunately, browser-based solutions won't cut it in my case; management wants all the bells and whistles offered by Exchange. However, I haven't seen any mention of the InsightConnector product made by a company called Bynari (with whom I have no affiliation). Bynari claims the product will fool MS Outlook clients (full, not Express) into thinking any ACL-enabled IMAP server is an exchange server. In other words, my users can potentially utilize the groupware features of Outlook (which said users are beating down my door to do) while I run an inexpensive Linux mail server behind the scenes. Sounds too good to be true. Anyone subjected this configuration to real life testing?"

IBM's Lotus Notes

There's a company named "IBM", maybe you've heard of them. They sell this product "Lotus Notes" which does everything Exchange does, plus a lot more, like integration with WebSphere, DB2, Sametime, Mindspan....

If you check the market shares, you'll see Lotus Notes and Exchange hold equal amounts (around 40% each, last I checked). It's so secure, it's the email system that the U.S. Department of Defense, and the CIA, both use.

AND, Lotus Notes (the server part, "Domino") runs on AIX, Linux, Solaris, Windows 2000, HP-UX, AS/400, S/390....

Clients available for Microsoft and Mac platforms. Web access is great. And, Notes runs pretty well under WINE.

http://www.lotus.com/domino

Just a guess...

But it wouldn't surprise me if in the future Microsoft modifies Exchange and Outlook to stay one step ahead of everyone. Surely they are aware of this type of product, and based on past experience they will do whatever is necessary to keep their hold on the Exchange market.

You're right, though, this does sound like a fantastic product if it really works as claimed.

Recent similar discussion

This was touched on in the comments after the Nat Friedman talks of Ximian, Gnome, and Red Carpet article:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=31492&thresh ol d=0&commentsort=3&tid=170&mode=thread&cid=3395232

Looks good

I tried TradeServer - an earlier product from Bynari, which was intended as an Exchange server replacement. It was composed of openldap, cygnus imapd and a webserver for publishing free/busy information. It was less than smooth to set up, and the user experience not on par with Exchange.

InsightConnector looks like a much better product though. From what I just read it appears to use IMAP as a substitute for MAPI, which is what Outlook otherwise uses in corporate mode.

Another alternative you might consider is HP OpenMail. It includes a MAPI service provider and should thus integrate tightly with Outlook, which is what most end-users (unfortunately) want.

Samsung is new OpenMail

http://samsungcontact.com/en/

Oracle

I believe Oracle has also made a complete exchange-like server that fools outlook as well, but its probably expenive as sin...

A similar free product

The Bill workgroup server [billworkgroup.org]) seems to do the mapi groupware type thing, I guess combining this with an imap mail server and an ldap (for contacts etc) server would do you for most everything that exchange does

Yep!

Here [earthweb.com] is a link to an article that says how winnebago successfully used bynari on IBM mainframes as an exchange substitute.

I'm intereseted in something like this too..

We looked at upgrading to exchange from msmail and we cannot afford it. We need a solution that will provide group calendaring that people can sync their hand helds to and also does the mail thing that outlook / msmail does. Also it needs to do the scheduling. I'm tempted to write my own, but that could take a while.

It cannont be web based but needs to have remote access (like exchange) so remote users and all can access their calendar and mail from remote locations.

It needs to be cheap, like near free. Exchange was a 70k solution and that is to much for this tiny struggling company.

If you have ideas please reply to this post and I'll check them out...

What does exchange server do?

I've never used this thing, my only experience with the exchange client is that's the thing that sends e-mails that implement ancient header extensions that are only supported for backwards compatability and the occational need to set up a webserver for the exchange users that can't get attachments. What does it do that IMAP doesn't? Does it compress internal spam e-mails? anything else?

Try Steltor

Steltor [steltor.com] (warning, some flash) creates Corporate Time, a Windows and Linux client and server package which is supposed to give Outlook and Exchange Server a run for their money. They have similar Outlook service DLLs if you want to run Outlook, too.

I evaluated these guys very briefly last year and it looked VERY promising. They're priced similarly to Exchange but you can use any LDAP and any IMAP/SMTP server, although shared folders won't work unless your IMAP server supports them. If you want an all in one solution, use their server software (which is, IIRC, OpenLDAP and Cyrus, not sure of the SMTP server or shared calendar server though). The tech support was actually clueful and helpful. I will be taking another look at them shortly, as my initial evaluation got cut short due to other projects becoming higher priority.

I tired Bynari back in '99 -- I didn't like them at all. The install obliterated my existing SMTP/IMAP/LDAP settings without warning and tech support (at the time) was a high school kid who was never there (presumably at school). I may give them another shot too because they really were the first at the plate when it comes to this, but Corporate Time also gets rid of Outlook which is a big pain in the ass, and they seem VERY happy to just sell you the client side stuff and let you use your existing MTA/LDAP setup, which is very important to me. qmail, vpopmail and Courier-IMAP have never failed me, and I'd rather know my OpenLDAP setup inside and out than rely on someone else's configuration.

Only three choices.

The key words to remember are; "management wants all the bells and whistles offered by Exchange".

This limits your choices considerably. The choices are Exchange, Lotus Notes and more recently, Oracle. The latter two will require far more work in the form of setup, configuration and custom programming. Exchange is going to be the easiest, does-it-all out of the box solution. The truth hurts, but there it is.

For those that question the capabilities of Exchange and what it has over SendMail, here are just a few. Email with extensive routing, filtering, tracking and control. Single message store. Calendaring, calendar sharing and free/busy search capabilities. Public folders and or NNTP. Extensibility allowing any application to be integrated such as voice mail. Virus Scanning and filtering support (Very Important). Automation (both server and client side). Web access client interface. Instant messaging. Active directory integration (allows management of a single directory). And, lest we forget the most important part, total and complete support of Microsoft Outlook clients (Love it or hate it, that's what the users want).

There are many more features and functions as well.

I'm testing it right now.

I'm currently using their 14 day evaluation copy. It seems to work as advertised. I am planning on replacing our existing exchange server with our IMAP mail server, unless something goes wrong in the next 7 days. :)

Insight Connector seems to me to work very well. No complaints so far, and it's certianly reasonably priced.

Do you really want that?

Clearly your management wants exchange. Choose something else and when there are problems management backed by MS marketroids will say "This wouldn't have happened had you chosen exchange!". I not saying there wouldn't be problems with exchange, just that maybe management will not complain as loudly about them as exchange was after all their own favourite. Of course I might be wrong and you have a really nice management who trusts your judjement. But with a statement like "management wants all the bells and whistles offered by Exchange." I seriously doubt it.
And depending on what you want to do with it, certainly the plethora of open source groupware suites (usually web-based) would fill most needs. phpgroupware and phprojekt seem to be among the more popular ones.

Let Me See If I Can Actually ANSWER THE QUESTION!

Ok, I feel like I am being a little bit off-topic by not jumping into the look at this/Exchange sucks/OpenMail/Domino/Eudora/mutt debate and instead choosing to RESPOND TO THE QUESTION, but here goes.

I am evaluating this product, and my reaction so far has been good/bad. First, the program does work as advertised. It's lightweight, pretty easy to use, and integrates well with Outlook. I have used it for a couple months, and it never broke on me. I haven't tested the bandwidth usage, which I might worry about, but overall it has done exactly what Bynari claims.

However, there are some real problems with it. First, Outlook likes its changes to be instantaneous, but Insight Connector only tracks updates on sync - a combination of time (every 15 secs, configurable) and action (every time you enter a folder, theoretically). When you move email, Outlook expects it to be gone. So when you move email using Insight Connector, it looks like it has moved to the new folder, but if you quickly look at either the old or new folders, sometimes emails show up in the old location or are absent from the new. After about 15-20 seconds and you re-enter the folder, things are ok, but it can be a little confusing / disconcerting at first. Who knows if they will ever address this.

Second issue - IMAP uses Trash, Outlook Deleted Items + IMAP uses Purge/Delete while Outlook uses Delete. The first issue is that you need to move items from Deleted Items to Trash, which is redundant. Additionally, this makes things very confusing, esp. with Courier's Move to Trash on Purge feature. It is really easy to end up deleting mail from Deleted Items, only to have it show up in Trash, then when you delete it from Trash it shows up in Deleted Items again. So deleting email can be tough to configure, and it doesn't work like you might expect. If the program simply mapped Deleted Items to Trash and Empty Deleted Items Folder to Purge, things would be fine.

I'm guessing that these features work better with their additional IMAP server product, but I haven't tested that so I can't be sure.

The last problem is the most difficult to fix. Calendar/Contact/To Do items are stored as MIME emails on the server. This means that accessing the IMAP server via any other method (webmail, imap client, etc.) makes that info inaccessible. So you end up storing your data on the server, but you have no other way to access it. Beats me how to fix this one, unless they also distributed a free web client with it.

All in all, it is a very good product, but honestly better suited for the more tech savvy. Anyone who has either little computer experience or extensive Outlook experience is likely to be a little confused and annoyed, but should be able to work around it eventually.