Linux alternatives to Windows SBS part one

David M Williams
Thursday, 18 September 2008 18:54

Opinion and Analysis

ClarkConnect
First on our list is ClarkConnect. This powerful bundle brings together mail, web, VPN, backup, file and print, anti-virus, anti-spam, firewall, Internet usage management, administrative tools and more features.

This meets our requirements. In fact, there is a very impressive feature set which surpasses SBS. You don’t get anti-virus or comprehensive backup tools built into SBS for starters.

None of this is surprising; the capability of Linux with respect to firewalling and user access control, as well as the use of SAMBA for file- and print- sharing with Windows, is well known and can’t be disputed.

Yet, ClarkConnect doesn’t leave all these as disjointed parts. The SBS crowd will be pleased to learn ClarkConnect is easy to configure through an intuitive web interface. This will walk you through creating user accounts, setting up sharing and printing, managing security – both in terms of user access and intrusion detection – as well as the rest of the cornucopia of functionality.

What most people will be hanging out to hear, I expect, is how it performs with groupware. This is, in my opinion, where Microsoft Exchange has a strong footing. Yet, ClarkConnect meets the challenge.

A full mail and calendaring system is provided, and sharing between users, webmail, free/busy scheduling, storage of data both on the server (for backup) and the workstation (for offline access as well as fast opening of attachments) are all there. This interfaces with Microsoft Outlook via the Toltec Connector, which is a proprietary add-on. You can inspect the details of how this is configured.

ClarkConnect is available in two forms. You can freely download the full open source Community Edition. There’s no cost at all although you are restricted to only having 10 users with e-mail capabilities. (You can have an unlimited number of users, but only 10 may have e-mail addresses.)

The Enterprise edition gives you unlimited e-mail users as well as some advanced network features that bolster the existing VPN and firewall capabilities. The enterprise edition can be licensed for a trifling $85 per year or a one-off fee of $435.

It’s important to understand the Toltec Connector is a proprietary product. You are given 10 licenses as part of the product, allowing 10 of your e-mail users to take part in the Groupware side of the product. An additional fee of $20/user is required to go beyond this. For a 75-user system you are therefore looking at a total of $1,735 being $435 + $20 x 65.

Now, straightaway someone is going to say, “Woahhh, that’s more than SBS” but don’t forget SBS ships with 5 licenses. You would need to purchase another 70 CALs to compare and you can be confident that SBS CALs are far more expensive than this. In reality, the cost of a fully kitted-out SBS installation like this far exceeds that of ClarkConnect. And ClarkConnect will then support a 76th user and beyond: SBS won’t.

So that’s one down. It hits the targets I set, it comes with a straightforward set of wizards to make it work and it offers great functionality without the price or restrictions of SBS.

We’ve hit the ground running. Stay tuned for more!



Page 1 – the baseline
Page 2 - What I expect from a Linux solution
Page 3 – A word on the money side
Page 4 – Option 1: ClarkConnect and reader feedback