So I know this guy that used to work at a company I used to work at[1]. Shortly before or maybe shortly after I was fired from the company, this person willingly left and moved to California to dig for gold. He ended up at this company called [I can’t tell you because it is a secret]. He wasn’t allowed to say… Because I like him, he would send me occasional emails and he would ask how I was doing and I would say great and ask how he was doing and he would say great and then he would ask me various AD questions which I would respond to. Well now it seems he has come out of the closet and the company name is called PostPath.
It seems this PostPath company is claiming they have a drop in replacement for Exchange that runs on Linux… I.E. You don’t change anything but the mail server (NO CLIENT CHANGES!!!) and you get the same functionality and everything… Supposedly it has 5x the performance as well….
If that is all for real, wow. I don’t know, if it works, if it works well, what its pricing model looks like… I just found out about it and I thought I would share the info. So if you are interested, here is the web site
I would love to hear thoughts and comments.
My expectation is that people will think it is cool, but then say wait…. On Linux, I expect it to be free…. I’m not paying $x for it… Not from a company I haven’t heard from…
    joe
[1] I started writing about this guy and the fact that I thought he was bright and it got long but it was actually interesting so instead of deleting I decided to shunt that stuff to another post…
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Looks like an interesting product. I personally don’t see any chance of this product ever making it into production at either job I’m at. The main reason being is that email is the lifeblood where I am and I’m sure it’s like that at most places.
Introducing something like this just throws another wrench into the system that is not needed. That is especially true if your exchange environment is stable and everything is working fine.
Some things I wonder about
1. Their performance (loadsim) test used a server that had only 1GB of memory. Many desktops have more than that at this point. I wonder what would happen to the numbers if they upped the memory on the exchange box.
2. How would PostPath perform vs. Exchange 2007 x64?
3. They mention integration with blackberry but what about devices with Active Sync?
4. Now your exchange admins will also have to learn Linux if they don’t already know it. It looks like they are supporting Centos and Red Hat right now.
5. You will still need exchange for OWA on the FE servers. I wonder how this works with OWA.
In the end exchange is just too important for us to use something else. I know I sound timid and this may be the greatest product but for now Exchange wins for us. I also don’t work at an IT crash strapped organization so maybe it’s that also makes the exchange decision easier for us.
It will be interesting to see how this product develops, interesting post Joe.
I was reading Paul Robichaux’s blog and found some other companies in the Linux-based Exchange space that I thought looked interesting.
Speaking as a dearly-departed Linux sysadmin, I will say–with some reservations and caveats–that Linux would be a more stable environment although I don’t really think one can quite out-Exchange Exchange.
My biggest problem with Exchange in general is the incestuous marriage between what is essentially an email product and directory services so much so that one (Exchange) cannot work without the other. This offends my Unix sensibilities.
Interesting. Too bad I have to register to see the demo. Not interested anymore.
No one wants a reverse engineered Exchange. Exchange has so many flaws and problems, why would you want to merely emulate that on Linux ? As a longtime Exchange engineer, my money is on the companies looking to outdue exchange – like Zimbra.
Jackass:
I thiink it is so people can be less afraid of losing what they currently have when making a jump. I would expect down the road, the company will add more and better features than what Exchange has, but that is just a guess. As a good start though, you can say, yeah we have duplicated what is available.