Exchange Alternative Contender

A few weeks ago I heard about a new version of the Kerio Mail Server that was in beta that was suppose to work with the Mac's iCal program.  Well on Tuesday (2/19) they released it and I was pretty geeked to try it.  Even nicer is that they have a Virtual Appliance of the system you can download, plug into your VMware Workstation/Player/Fusion, and turn on.

Anyway, I ended up spending way to much time last night with it.  It was very easy to setup, but then I tried using it on all three platforms, Linux, Mac and Windows, and it worked, I mean it really did work, very nice and the price is much better then Zimbra!

On the Mac I'm able to use my iCal and Address Book and have both of those sync to the server (almost with IMAP for Mail).  In the web interface I can modify my mail, contacts and calendar items and it all syncs back to my Mac.  In addition I can view the Public Folders calendar and contacts as well.  The only thing that doesn't seem to sync is any Distribution Lists.

On Windows using Outlook and their Outlook Connector I was able to login to my same account, have all of my contacts and calendar items sync up.  Again, editing them in the web interface and then watching them sync automatically back to Outlook.  You can even run Outlook "offline", make changes, and when you have a connection again the data syncs up.

You can also see the free/busy time for scheduling meetings, in Outlook, the web interface and (are you ready) in iCal!  So after 4 hours of playing with this product I'm positive I'll use it for any new groupware installation over Exchange, better price, better platform support and no Active Directory required!