[Novalug] Need recommendations for office server packages

[Tom Gutnick]

I have a friend who was using Microsoft Office Live for her company - web
site, plus e-mail for four people.  Microsoft is shuttering this service
next week.  I've helped her transition away - using Bluehost, we've got web
hosting plus e-mail accounts, and with IMAP access, they can access their
inboxes in Outlook from any of their computers.  (They're happy with that
part, since everything stays in sync.)

 

But after the migration, we realized that we had lost some other
capabilities in the process, specifically shared calendars and contacts.
Through their Office Live account, everybody had full access to these
through Outlook, and could synchronize with their iPhones.   Her budget is
limited, so I'm looking for low-cost solutions.  She has a file/print server
in the office, although it's running a workstation flavor of Windows; we
don't really want to deal with a Windows Server.  So here are my issues:

 

1.       Are there any good open-source shared calendars?  I found something
called Web Calendar that looked promising, but we absolutely have to be able
to easily synchronize with Outlook, and Web Calendar seems to be weak in
that regard. They all love their iPhones, but I've determined that Apple's
iCloud service isn't really workable in this context. So far, the best
option I've come up with is Google Calendar, which will synchronize with
Outlook, but I'd prefer something that's not proprietary. Any suggestions?



2.       What's the best way of managing shared e-mail address books that
can be accessed through Outlook?  Is that something that an LDAP server will
do?  (Her network is ~very~ simple, and we don't need to manage things like
domain logins.)  Any recommendations for something that's easy to set up and
use?



3.       Assuming that the answers to #1 and 2 above mean that I need to
have a Linux server running, which is likely to be quicker and easier to get
up and runnning:  running a Linux distro within VirtualBox on the existing
Windows server, or moving from Windows to Linux and using Samba to provide
the file and printer sharing?

 

Thanks for the suggestions,

Tom

 

 

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