For fear of stirring the pot much more than it is already, I won't go
into the banter.  :-)  But in the spirit of the original post, I would
like to point out some great things about some other Linux
collaboration suites and what our enterprise has been working on.

For the past year, I have been heavily involved with the Zimbra sales
and engineering team to potentially replace our entire Exchange
footprint.  Mind you, I don't believe in replacing a product simply
because it's Linux based.  There HAS to be sound justification for
making such a move, and we demand full integration with our current
and future environment goals.  That being said, ZCS has proven to be
an amazing product, and has everything any enterprise could want.
Full cross platform support, tight integration with Active Directory
or other LDAP implementations, enterprise archiving for HIPPA
compliance, Blackberry and native ActiveSync support for Windows
mobile platforms.

That being said, we are also a huge Cisco shop, and integration with
our VoIP infrastructure is key.  So I was very pleased to hear that
Cisco has recently purchased PostPath.  Not only does it integrate
with AD, but it actually can be managed via Exchange tools, as it is
completely and transparently uses the same protocols!  This means
Outlook clients don't even know the difference, but all functionality
is of course entirely also available from an AJAX driven web front
end.  If you are not familiar with this product, you seriously need to
take a look at this video.  It's pretty exciting stuff.

http://www.postpath.com/demos.html

Also in recent news, Cisco has also just bought Jabber.  They plan to
provide full integration of the system into PostPath.

http://blogs.cisco.com/news/comments/jabber_acquisition_and_cisco_collaboration/

In fact, I'm sure some of you may have even heard this a while back.
Cisco's new Nexus switching platform is based on Linux (NX OS).
Fastest switches in the world... running Linux.  Cisco's VoIP server's
are now entirely based on Linux, with no future support for MS
planned.  Cisco's digital signage platform, an exciting platform to
run HD video and other content across complex networks also runs
entirely on Linux.

Of course... hehe.. their front end interfaces at times tend to be a
bit challenged.  They're working on that, supposedly, with cross
platform support at the forefront of their objectives.  :-)

Really what is remarkable here is the amount of legitimacy Linux has
gained, and huge companies such as Cisco, IBM, Intel, etc... are
continually pushing the envelope.  Regardless of which "side of the
fence" anyone is on, the face of yesterdays technology is changing.
It's just a really good time to be in the industry, and have an ever
growing list of great choices.

--
Gilbert Mendoza
PGP: 0x075DBCA9
Email: gmendoza at gmail.com
http://www.savvyadmin.com
https://launchpad.net/~gmendoza
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GilbertMendoza

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