New user with questions

[Techmonkey]

Ok let me start by giving you a bit of information on my current situation:

I am IT manager for a large UK company. We have been using very simple POP3 based e-mail and Outlook with local PST storage on the client end for many years.

We have out grown this basic functionality and now wish to find something to replace our ancient e-mail system and to give us new functionality such as:

-Shared Calendars
-Shared Mailboxes
-Global Address books

I asked the question over on the Spiceworks forum and was told to take a look at OX which I must admit looks absolutely lovely and I am surprised I didn't know it existed.

The company I work for currently has 370 users and it is increasing rapidly.

So here are my questions:

Which version of OX should I be looking at? Xpress or Server? What are the main differences?

We may switch to using the webmail as it looks nice, but if we dont and stay with Outlook (2000) can you use shared calendars, address books and mailboxes through outlook?

Costing, I see the pricing at about $500 dollars which is very attractive but what extra costs am I likely to see on top of that? Are there any license fee's? fee's per user? monthly/yearly fee's?

What support is available?

What sort of spec server should I be looking at for a 400+ user system?

Sorry for so many questions, but I want to make sure I am getting the right thing as I have tried many different solutions and not found what I am looking for yet.

[Martin Heiland]

Hi there,

Which version of OX should I be looking at? Xpress or Server? What are the main differences?

This highly depends on what your requirements are - both do their job and they do it well but you should evaluate both and check which requirements are fulfilled best on what server.

We may switch to using the webmail as it looks nice, but if we dont and stay with Outlook (2000) can you use shared calendars, address books and mailboxes through outlook?

Yes, this is possible with both, Express and OX5.

Costing, I see the pricing at about $500 dollars which is very attractive but what extra costs am I likely to see on top of that? Are there any license fee's? fee's per user? monthly/yearly fee's?

This pricing contains a several amount of users and you are able to get additional user packs. The support/update offering is targeted for one year, after that you're able to get a renewal for a lower price per user to keep on support and updates. There are no additional license fees for the Outlook Connector, it's included at the base package already.

What support is available?

If you're looking forward to serve 400 users you should contact Open-Xchange for a individual support offering, there are several offerings starting at basic ticket based mail/phone support up to a dedicated support employee.

What sort of spec server should I be looking at for a 400+ user system?

Well, just one medium size server should be enough but this depends on your specific requirements and user "profile" (poweruser/casual users/mobile users/outlook users).

Sorry for so many questions, but I want to make sure I am getting the right thing as I have tried many different solutions and not found what I am looking for yet.

You're welcome to ask

[Techmonkey]

Martin,

Thank you very much for you prompt and excellent reply.

I shall be downloading the evaluation copy soon and having a play with it.

However just one quick question, obviously to test a new mail server I need to have mail coming in to it.

so how can I achieve this without taking our existing mail server offline?

[Techmonkey]

and another question I just thought of.

What would be very handy if the users can set their own out of office?

[Martin Heiland]

Hi,

You may set up a different (local) mail domain for the evaluation servers. Lets say you've @mycompany.co.uk for your existing mailserver then you should use @oxeval.co.uk for internal testing usage. This may enable you to test E-Mail at your local network but as long as there is no "officially" DNS MX Entry for this domain pointing to your OX Server you won't be able to receive E-Mail via the Internet and your outgoing E-Mail to recipients at the internet will most likely be blocked as spam because you're sending from a "invalid" maildomain.
If you have the possibility, just create a new subdomain for your existing "official" maildomain like oxeval.mycompany.co.uk and point the MX entry to the IP of the OX Server. This requires some routing if the machine is inside a DMZ or internal Network.

You may find more information about this here:

http://www.open-xchange.com/fileadmin/downloads/oxee/How_to_Setup_an_Email_Server.pdf

Greetings