These are the systems we are asing the project focus group to evaluate:

• Novell GroupWise. This is the existing system used by administrative offices on campus for email and calendar functions. It is an example of what we mean by an integrated email/calendaring solution.
• Cyrus with Oracle Calendar. Cyrus is the open-source email system currently used by students, faculty and academic staff. Oracle Calendar is one of a handful of calendaring packages that can work with a separate email system. (We would have liked to use Apple’s iCal calendaring server for calendar functions instead of Oracle, but Apple’s product is not available for demonstration in time.) This is the only non-integrated package we are evaluating. With certain email clients using certain plug-ins, the distinction becomes less clear. We think it likely that the focus group and advisory committees will tell us that an integrated system is what we need. If they end up recommending a non-integrated solution, we should consider a second round of evaluations looking at choices within the non-integrated solutions.
• Microsoft Exchange 2007 with Outlook 2007. Exchange is a very popular email/calendar/groupware package, especially in business. The 2007 versions of Outlook and Exchange are very new, and have many new features and enhancements over previous versions of the software.
• Zimbra Collaboration Suite. Zimbra is an integrated system that will work with clients like Outlook and other email clients used on campus, such as Thunderbird, Eudora and Apple Mail. Zimbra has many interesting features available in its web interface which are not currently available in any of the other systems.
• Mirapoint Message Server. Mirapoint provides an email/calendar solution that is compatible with Outlook and other email clients already used on campus.. It also comes with its own web interfaces for email and calendaring. Mirapoint’s most interesting features are that it is a highly stable, highly available system (99.999% uptime), and requires very little staff time to administer. Because of this, they claim to have a very low total cost of ownership.