Open Source Case Study: Mail Server

• Managing Expectations

  • The applications don't look slick or pretty. In the Open Source world function comes before form. If how pretty an application looks matters to you, then you should just use these apps in your infrastructure – where you don't have to look at them.
  • Some Open Source apps have “add-on” graphical front-ends but in general Input and Output to an Open source app will be in text.
  • Some authentication techniques don't mix well with Open Source (yet) - so you may need duplicate lists of users and a separate sets of passwords for the users of an Open Source application.

Notes:

About half the consulting cost of this installation was spent to train on-site
personnel and script/automate/iconize administration tasks. This removes most of
the extremely steep learning curve necessary to administer and maintain current
Open Source solutions. This also helps to make Open Source a viable solution
for organizations that lack experience with Linux and it's applications.
Open Source solutions in their raw form are often very ugly (though quite functional).


Adding Linux servers to an Active Directory network is getting easier everyday.
The release of Samba 3.x now allows organizations to use Linux File Servers in their
Active Directory networks.