Exchange Migration to Zimbra?
Alexander Muse , September 11, 2007
We have used Zimbra for our development business as well as for our free POP3 service (the Architel team still uses Exchange). After using Zimbra I could never go back to Outlook/Exchange. Recently a couple of our clients wanted to migrate from Exchange to Zimbra. If you read the documentation made available by Zimbra it would appear migrating from Exchange to Zimbra would be a piece of cake. Turns out it isn’t.
The technical glitches we encountered were made even more cumbersome by the mis-information Zimbra provides to customers. Zimbra suggests, “seamless compatibility with other clients like Microsoft Outlook” ~ seamless? Really? I don’t think so. For example, it isn’t obvious that Zimbra won’t support shared folders (i.e. there are alternative ways to access folders, but it requires users learn a new system) from Zimbra’s documentation. About mid-way through your first migration it becomes clear that shared folders are no longer an option (fairly big seam IMHO). Zimbra’s website also indicates that their software support Outlook 2003 and 2007 (beta), but if you try to use Zimbra with Outlook 2007 you quickly realize it doesn’t work. I called the Zimbra support team and they indicated that, “yea, it won’t work with Outlook 2007.” To this date the website still claims, “supports outlook 2003 / 2007 (beta). Why don’t they modify their website?
I won’t bother going into the real (and expected) migration bugs, but I did want to point out that organizations considering migrating from Exchange to Zimbra should spend most of their time reconsidering. Zimbra is a fantastic email solution for business. It is a great and (in my opinion) far superior email solution to Outlook/Exchange. But, I would never suggest a company continue to use Outlook with Zimbra. Why? Why would you? Outlook IS the problem for users and Zimbra IS the solution. The IT department will thank you for switching, but only if you really switch to the Zimbra web client or the Zimbra desktop client. Once an organization has decided to change the way they use email and switch to Zimbra they must realize that they need to help their users deal with the change. They must train their users on tags, search and categories. They must prepare users that there will be incompatibilities that may never get translated. If you want to use Outlook my advice is to use Exchange (period).
