Microsoft Exchange may be one of the most used groupware products on the market but there are also many open source alternatives available.

The messaging and groupware landscape has altered significantly in the last few years with, like it or loathe it, Microsoft’s Exchange Server now firmly ensconced as the number one solution regardless of customer size or industry sector. There are alternatives, of course, but rival developers have more or less given up on trying to beat Microsoft at (what’s now) it’s own game.

After conducting an evaluation of alternatives, [a] hospital [in Scranton, Pa.] decided not to upgrade to a newer version of Exchange. Instead, it went with a Linux-based Exchange clone that it felt could meet the needs of its 700 users without forcing them and IT to learn a whole new system.

Microsoft Exchange is the name most organisations go for when thinking of sharing calendars, e-mail etc. However, there are free software alternatives—and of course you don’t have to go for the obvious or popular option.

Scalix collaboration platform, with its latest release version 11.4, aims to be a good alternative to Microsoft Exchange.

The Deutsche Borse Group manages the International Securities Exchange, an equity options exchange, in New York and the Eurex and Deutsche Borse's own Xetra cash exchange. The Xetra stock exchange platform is also used by the Irish Stock Exchange, the European Energy Exchange, and the Shanghai Stock Exchange among others. It's long used Linux as the basis of these high-speed stock exchanges.

One obstacle some organizations face when trying to migrate from Microsoft Exchange to a free groupware server has been Outlook users who, for whatever reason, are not yet willing to switch to another client. Bynari, Inc. in collaboration with a number of server developers, including the Citadel project [http://www.citadel.org] has developed a new Outlook connector that uses open standard data formats and protocols to store groupware data. Users of legacy environments (i.e. Windows + Outlook) will now be fully interoperable on the same server with users of free software. This could potentially spell the permanent end of Exchange lock-in.

Over the past couple of years, Microsoft shops have been increasingly wooed by vendors offering alternatives to Windows, Exchange, Microsoft Office and other Microsoft wares. The competition has grown so fierce that in May, Red Hat went so far as to sue Switzerland (and win).

Recent developments in the OpenChange and KDE open source projects are set to bridge a "missing link" in messaging and groupware compatibility from Microsoft's Exchange to open source clients.