[X4U] OpenLDAP

[Stroller]

On 23 Aug 2007, at 20:38, M K wrote:
>
> I'm looking for a replacement for the Exchange public address  
> book / contacts.
>
> I think that OpenLDAP is the answer, but I was wondering what other  
> people are doing.
> ...
> What we need to replace:
>
> 1) email (that's the easy one)
> 2) calendar and tasks (iCal will do all that rather well I think)
> 3) publicly share a list of contacts
> 4) do all this on an iPhone
>
>
> Are there any open projects in the works?

Are you aware of iCal server? This appears to be Apple's attempt to  
tie undermine Outlook / Exchange's killer features. I expect it to be  
pretty good.

Are ALL the clients Macs? I think this would probably go quite well  
if that's the case. I see the big stumbling block to be if you  
currently have Outlook clients on Windows - I think they would quite  
reasonably be reluctant to switch to Thunderbird or whatever.

You ask about open projects - Apple are releasing the source to iCal  
server under an OSS license. I think the idea being to spur wider  
adoption & encourage 3rd-party clients - I anticipate a bunch for  
Linux and a handful for Windows and that one or more of the latter  
might be quite decent as an Outlook-replacement in a couple of years  
time.

You'll have to cost-benefit for yourself whether you wait and grab OS  
X server at next release and take advantage of Apple's sweet  
configuration utilities or stitch the services together now yourself  
under Lunix; one could imagine that the latter could easily increase  
the daily workload of a busy system administrator by a significant  
amount.

> Is anyone using iPhone on an enterprise level yet with OSX server?

This is surely only necessary if you're the IT department to an  
enterprise which only employs Apple fanboys. I'd ask first, "what do  
I need to achieve with mobile phone integration?" and then consider  
client software; IMO the iPhone may not be the best choice.

Stroller.