Is it possible to receive mail on SME first and then transfer to Exchange server

[Gracious]

I have been using SME server for my company emails and web application hosting from a long time. Recently, my manager wants to benefit from a shared calendar, address book and all the trimmings, in short a groupware solutions. I initially tried egroupware but the users are very much attached to Outlook that it is not possible to use this new application. But my manager wants me to go for exchange. I would still like to keep my SME for the spam filtering (which works wonderfully with spamassassin). My question is, is it possible to receive mail on the SME, tagged with SpamAssassin and return everything to the Exchange server. Otherwise is there a distro other than sme that'll allow myself to do this while maintaining the web proxy and web hosting?

[Sabastiaan]

You may go with Zarafa which exists as addons to SME. You can also go with Zimbra but ti is not available with SME. Attention: we must understand that Exchange requires Outlook as a client, Outlook is not included with Exchange 2007 CAL ie it is buyable in Office. And Exchange 2007 requires a Windows 64-bit (2003 64 bits or 2008 64 bits or 2008R2). It's always the same: we do not blame a manager who chooses Microsoft even if it does not work, we always blame a manager for choosing Linux when it does not work as imagined.

[Paisley007]

By studying closely the solution exchange, you will get the following result: a new Windows 2008 machine, full of license appendices (backup, antivirus, Outlook clients) in addition to exchange. It may be cool for a microsoft lover boss. You already have therefore a new machine in your staffing! In my opinion, do not look for the distribution that does everything. If you really master the system administration, you could upload the same machine. if a machine => function (or group of related functions). So you can install this machine with a Zimbra, or OpenXchange. The main change is the AJAX web client and right click, drag and drop, etc. etc. there. Nothing to do with the web client in pure egroupware demo on their site. And maybe it will hang better with test users. Please note that you will retain SME because it is strongly advised to insert an SMTP relay between Exchange and the Internet.

[Gracious]

Firstly thank you for your reply. It's gonna be hard to change his mind. We have actually planned to acquire a new machine already which will be running Windows 2008 server. And we do have Outlook on all each of the machines which will be connecting to this server. And about SME connection, how do I configure my SME in this case?

[Lemog]

Zarafa is the best solution that you should certainly study about. It provides a complete exchange solution:
- Contrib for SME stable for several years
- Support for IMAP and iCal based clients
- Calendars, contacts and tasks shared
- Webacc that resembles Outlook
- Mobile synchronization with z-push
- 4 free licenses for Outlook client, additional licenses purchased.

I use the open-source version of it without any problems for 2 years while I've never managed to completely synchronize HTC, Samsung and other iPhone with eGroupWare and OpenXchange.

[Gracious]

I have studied Zarafa and I have no doubt that it is an excellent solution. But the solution that I seek to be integrated to 100% in a Windows environment (recovering from an active directory account, among other things) I have a linux server environment 100% but this is impossible because of the business application that we use. With regard to the groupware solution we will move on to the Exchange's a fact. My question is not an alternatives to Exchange, but how to use the antispam features an SME (or another distribution) with exchange.