Transcript: Scalix pushes e-mail on Linux

Description: Julie Hanna Farris of Scalix says there's less downtime, less risk and less TCO with e-mail on Linux. Is this too good to be true?

Hello, my name is Julie Hanna Farris and I'm the founder of Scalix. Scalix has developed a Linux-based e-mail platform and today I'm going to talk about two topics that get a lot of airtime, but not necessarily in the same conversation: e-mail and Linux.

Now we all know Linux is hot, and e-mail is something that we live and die by. It's the most widely-deployed application in the world. Killer apps are things that drive adoption of new platforms. Remember Lotus 123 and the PC revolution, for example. Now there's a lot of advantages about Linux that lend it to e-mail and things you'll hear about Linux -- better reliability, better security, better price performance. What does that mean in the context of e-mail? Better reliability means less downtime. Better security means less risk. Better price performance means lower TCO. These are all things that organizations grapple with today around mail, security holes, downtime in mail, cost of e-mail.

Now there is such a growing recognition of these advantages that in fact 55% of organizations have indicated they are going to evaluate a deploy mail on Linux in the next couple of years, and 21% have said that they would prefer Linux as a starting point. And the beauty with Linux is that everyone gets what they want, end-users, IT organizations and management, so end-users can continue to use the mail client of their choice: Outlook, Evolution, Mozilla or Firefox for Web mail, IE, Pop, Imap, Linux, Unix, Windows, Mac. No change to the user. No disruption. IT gets what they want running the e-mail infrastructure on Linux and all the advantages with less downtime, less risk, and less TCO. And management is happy because their risk and costs are reduced.

So now you're probably right about now thinking that this sounds too good to be true and even if it's true conceptually, do Linux mail systems really give me what I have today in terms of functionality or am I looking at trading some of that functionality off and if I can't get the same functionality what about migration. So the answer to the first question is yes, Linux-based mail systems do absolutely give you the level of functionality that we've all come to know and expect today, and what if I were to tell you that you could actually migrate e-mail to a Linux system in a way that was completely non-disruptive and transparent to your users and what does that mean. Non-disruptive means that users don't have any downtime. They always have access to mail even during migration. It means no data loss. All the mail in the calendar data, all that integrity is retained. It means no functionality loss.

With all of these factors coming together, everyone truly does get what they want, and users get what they want, IT organizations get what they want, management gets what they want. So if your organization is considering alternatives for e-mail it's in your best interests to consider Linux-based systems, and in doing so you too will realize why e-mail has a potential to be the killer app for Linux.

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