No matter what Google Wave or Tweetdeck may present to us in the way of cutting edge instant comms the bulky back end business world of I.T is invariably slow to adopt such technological freshness. Email is still the preferred method of communication and will probably be so for some time, as such it’s obviously somewhat prudent to have a robust and comprehensive cost effective solution in place.

The big old Microsoft giant presently rules the roost with MS Exchange and there’s no denying its ubiquitous suitability as a communications enabler and business flow facilitator, however being a Microsoft product of course it’s not cheap. At around $3,000 for the Enterprise version + $30 per single CAL (Client Access Licence) even for a small to medium sized organisation it doesn’t take a gifted accountant to realise how much eMail and shared calendars can drain an already cash strapped budget, but is there really an alternative?

Well, yes, there is indeed, and not just a cheaper alternative (substantially cheaper in fact –  i.e FREE) but one which also offers matched functionality alongside inversely related ease of admin and installation. Ladies & Gentlemen, let me introduce Citadel Groupware, yet another superb success story from the wonderful world of open source.

There’s a legacy attitude to shy away from free products as they’re invariably perceived as sub standard, however the opposite couldn’t be more true with Citadel and it really is a credit to itself, so much so it’s quite rightly being tagged as an “Exchange killer”, let’s have a look at why.

For one there’s the ease of installation and anyone who’s wrestled for (potentially) weeks with raw Linux mail systems will know exactly where I’m coming from. Even the hardiest of sys admins can lose irretrievable chunks of their lives just trying to configure a server for remote client send & receive, let alone for extended webmail & groupware calendaring functionality (add those into the mix and we could be talking weeks). Citadel is a good days work.

Admittedly there are a certain amount of pre-requisites to attend to, setting up the server OS, ensuring domain & MX records are configured correctly etc but you need to secure the ground for any enterprise solution and once done Citadel almost installs itself (albeit with a bit of guidance en-route and some bits and bobs of post-installation admin to configure accounts & domain aliases). Added LDAP connectivity (MS Active Directory authentication/single sign on) may stretch the “good days work” tag a few notches but with integration coming as a factored feature you’re still going to be home in good time.

The Citadel feature list is certainly quite something and covers every requirement for comprehensive groupware, and them some, I really recommend you visit the site yourself but as a taster here’s a brief run down of what’s in the mix…

• eMail (IMAP/POP3 & authenticated SMTP/SSL for all protocols). Accessible from any desktop client, e.g MS Outlook, MS Outlook Express, Mac OSX Mail, Thunderbird (Mac/PC/Linux), Evolution (Linux/Gnome)), Kontact (Linux/KDE), Opera Mail & Eudora.
• AJAX based WebMail with full access to all other system functionality via WebCit
• Multiple Domain support & cross server replication (unlimited scalability)
• Unique database-driven, single-instance message store
• Support for push eMail & mobile devices
• Shared address books
• Shared calendaring
• Instant messaging
• Mailing list server
• Bulletin Boards

WebCit screenshot :

But there’s more, encompassed in all the above comes Citadels unique strong point – Rooms.

“A room may be used as an email folder, a discussion forum, a real-time chat, a mailing list, a calendar, an address book, an RSS reader, or several of these at the same time. You can also distribute a Citadel installation across multiple servers, allowing unlimited horizontal scalability”.

And as Citadel itself also most proudly states…

“Citadel is true open source software. Unlike other groupware servers, it isn’t a cut-down version of an expensive proprietary “pro” version. We make our very best work available to everyone on the same terms. 100% of our code is covered by the GNU General Public License (GPL3)”

TooMuchGreen are strong advocates of Citadel, we use it ourselves and can provide comprehensive installation, migration and support services for new or existing instances. We would be more than happy to help you streamline your groupware solution through a Citadel platform. Please feel free to contact us for more information.

Or, alternatively you could opt for MS Exchange 2010, it’s your choice and of course your money and your time, maybe you have plenty of both? If so we’re happy for you, but us, we much prefer an easy (and cheap) life

Email is officially yesterdays technology. Previously groundbreaking as the quickest form of communication it now lags on the periphery of snail mail terminology due to the instant zip of new alternatives such as Twitter.

Of course collaboratively it’s still the de facto standard for business interaction, but that’s only because Google Wave hasn’t been released and adopted yet. Google Wave? Indeed. After being shipped off to Google’s Sydney office to develop the product in secret the Wave team presented their two year project at the recent Google IO developers conference, I went through the presentation and really didn’t expect to be so impressed. So, what IS the Wave?

Take all the annoyances and shortfalls of bulk project emailing and streamline them, re-invent some old concepts (Operational Transformation), pull in some new ones, add something really cool and re-package it all for delivery through a browser. Print some t-shirts, preview it to a bunch of whooping developers (quite literally) and release it to them as open source, welcome to the Wave.

Obviously that’s selling it way short  and in all honesty you’d do far better to watch the (80 minute) presentation than try to glean the enormity of it’s potential from this meager blog entry, however I’ll try to expand the concept sufficiently to do it justice and push you toward the YouTube Video.

A Wave is a packaged communication module for recorded group collaboration, it runs in a slick browser based GUI environment and consists of messages and related updates through videos, links, text or any other form of digital media you wish to include, it’s member manageable and stunningly instant. You know those awful disjointed long email trails which just grow and grow and become even more disjointed and harder to decipher and confusing to follow as extra information gets added by others reading them at different stages and adding their own opinions before checking amendments they can’t  actually get to anyway because someone forgot to Reply to All somewhere back down the line (BREATHE..!!), exactly, but not an issue with a Wave, you just add your *bit* where applicable and it’s all recorded for staged playback. It’s genius in it’s simplicity – group email with extras and a time-line, expandable and flowing, one instance, one place.

I thought Twitter was  a revelation (and it was/is) but the Wave can streamline connected productivity even more, how about instant real time language translation for a start, and we’re not just talking Babelfish here, it’s contextually intelligent. Previous experience with Maps showed the enormous potential for rapid expansion by opening up a product for 3rd party API development and Google are most wisely doing the same with the Wave codebase. They also need the quickest route for adoption if they’re going to succeed by replacing project email as we know it to become the new global standard for group collaboration, obviously no small undertaking…but…remember, this is GOOGLE.

Aside from envisioned real-time interaction the fact Wave is delivered solely through a browser (ANY browser) could seal the fate of the desktop operating system and the in-box for good (hello Google Chrome OS ?). As you can run the Wave GUI through Firefox on any platform for free with no need for MS Exchange and Outlook Microsoft should (quite rightly) be most concerned, and although they do still have Active Directory it now seems only a matter of time before the centralised security of Linux based desktop virtualisation comes knocking there too, Ubuntu Server is by nature already a hypervisor and KVM support (Kernel based Virtual Machine) has been offered since version 8.10.

Times they are a changing, cloud cover is coming and the surf is rising, looks like it’s time time to wax up the longboard and ride the Wave.