The Scalix factor

If you are a company that's using Microsoft Exchange Server and on the desktop, using Microsoft Outlook to connect to those exchange servers, what if I told you that there was a technology out there that looked, smelled, felt and behaved just like Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook, but cost about two-thirds less?

Well, such a technology exists and it's called Scalix. Now, what Scalix has done and said, look, if you have an Exchange server and it cost you this much money and let's say you have another one, because it's not very scalable and you have to spend that much money again. So if you spent all of this money here, they can take all of this and replace it with one Scalix server. That's one Scalix server and the cost of it is only this. Now, this is a lot cheaper than this and that can save you a lot of money.

Now, to your Outlook clients that are connecting to that Scalix server, they never notice the difference. They think and feel as though there's an Exchange server running on the network. They get all of their calendaring information and they get all of their e-mail information just the same way they were getting it before. No hiccups, no nothing.

Now, what does this allow you to do? Well, one of the things that Scalix has done and said, "Well, we've also got a technology that works in the browser and it looks, feels, smells and behaves just like Outlook." Well, what this means is that using a browser like Firefox or even IE with no plug-ins whatsoever, they have emulated the Outlook interface. It looks and feels like Outlook. Users may not even be able to tell the difference between a browser as opposed to being in Outlook. Now with that browser, you connect directly to the Linux-based Scalix server and now you've got this environment where they're running Windows, using a browser and connecting to Scalix. Well, that puts you one step away from driving your cost of ownership down even more because, why, if your browser based on your e-mail, can you move to a Linux desktop, if you move to a Linux desktop, now IE doesn't run on Linux, but Firefox does, running Firefox and you use that to connect to your Scalix server, well, guess what? The price of this Windows desktop is this and the price of this Linux desktop is only this, with the Firefox browser.

Now, you're only playing this and this for your entire e-mail solution as opposed to paying this and this. And what does that mean for Microsoft? Well, any of these existing customers on Exchange or Outlook are considering this solution instead, it could be game over for Exchange and Outlook.