[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] Dear Exchange - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA
Tue, Oct 25 2011 23:54 bradley

Dear Exchange

We need to talk.  You've put on a few pounds lately.  You aren't the thin young thing you used to be.  To the point where people are talking behind your back.  In various listserves in fact, folks are starting to chat about how there's a young thin thing called Kerio that is attracting the eyes of folks.  It's lighter.  Thinner.  Less maintenance....and worse yet, CHEAPER than you are. 

I know that since you were born you have had your feet on the ground but lately you have your nose in the air so much that I'm starting to get concerned that you don't realize that not all of the people around you are too thrilled with what you are up to. 

I know you say that you want to be built for those big spender folks, but are they forking out the money for you lately?  I also know that while some people want to travel in the areas you say you plan to go to, not everyone does.  To the point where the Kerio buzz for SMB in starting to grow.  Someone even said they are putting Kerio on SBS Essentials.

Bottom line, just be aware that people are talking behind your back.  And it's not what I think you want them to be talking about.

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# re: Dear Exchange

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 12:44 PM by Dean

LOL !

Are you the gossiping trouble maker in your office ?

# re: Dear Exchange

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 12:57 PM by Dean

The real problem here is the state of the economy in this country. In the world for that matter. When no one has any money to spend they look for the cheapest thing they can get thier hands on. They start tearing things down and rebuilding them cheaper but there are always two sides to every decision you make.

# re: Dear Exchange

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 5:10 PM by Scott

Funny, i was just thinking about Kerio the other day.  I was at their presentation at smb nation in 2010.   interesting product, going to install it on a sbs 2011 ess box i am playing around with.

# re: Dear Exchange

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 9:44 PM by Ben Krause

Does Kerio work with outlook and allow users to share calendars and sync their email, contacts, and appointments across multiple devices like smart phones, PC's, and web?

I thought the biggest draw for Exchange was that you could unify all your messaging with ease among these mediums.  Also, I would hate to have to use something like IMAP or POP3 again for email access.  Exchange made it easy to setup users and keep everything consistent.

Again, I don't know anything about Kerio though.

# re: Dear Exchange

Thursday, October 27, 2011 1:18 AM by bradley

www.kerio.com/.../iphone and www.kerio.com/.../activesync

# re: Dear Exchange

Thursday, October 27, 2011 8:01 AM by Boris Mekler

I've been working with Kerio, alongside Exchange deployments, since 2004 or thereabouts. The product itself is okay, though less full-featured and more buggy than Exchange. Integration with Outlook, however, is problematic to say the least. The old Kerio Connector for Outlook is absolute garbage. The newer Kerio Connector Offline is better, but performance on larger (gigabyte-plus) mailboxes is horrible, even on fast systems. I have a customer who runs their light users on Kerio with access by POP3 and webmail to save costs, but had no choice but to migrate the heavy users to Exchange 2010 because for 10-20GB mailboxes, Kerio was unusable.

# re: Dear Exchange

Thursday, October 27, 2011 5:46 PM by Ben Krause

That's really helpful.  Looking at the links Susan provided I was optimistic it could replace exchange but after hearing what you have to say, I'm not so sure I would want to.  (at this point anyway)

# re: Dear Exchange

Thursday, October 27, 2011 5:53 PM by bradley

You have people with 10 gig mailboxes and that's not painful now with Outlook?

# re: Dear Exchange

Thursday, October 27, 2011 9:41 PM by Chris

Susan,

Your post has the answer for 10GB+ mailboxes:

msmvps.com/.../impact-of-drives-on-outlook-speed.aspx

Throw in a 10,000RPM drive or an SSD depending on budget. For my clients it's typically only a few users (and usually the principles) that have that large a mailbox.

# re: Dear Exchange

Friday, October 28, 2011 3:59 PM by Indy

There is no technical reason why a 10G mailbox can't be solved by throwing memory or disk space at it, in 2011 to make excuses that we should settle with 10G mailboxes is absurd.

People don't buy Microsoft just for the name, they buy it for support.  I don't know if Kerio will be around 3+ years from now.  I do know that Microsoft will be, and that they have known, predictable product lifelines that I can easily budget for.

Exchange 2010 on SBS 2011 is EXTREMELY cheap for what you get.  You get as close to enterprise setup as you will ever get for a few hundred per user, and much less when divided over 3+ years or however long you keep it.

I can't read your CAPTCHYAs, wonder if this will go through.