Meeting Notes from 7/17/03
1. First, we clarified a few more ways of finding out what we need to know. David shared with us some of the questions he’s been asking about calendaring, such as:
o What is the OS of the server that your product runs on?
o What do I have to buy to make it work?
o How does your product authenticate/authorize? Does it work with ANY LDAP?
o What DB does it use (Oracle, MySQL, etc.)? Using a proprietary DB? If so, how does it handle simultaneous read/writes?
o Does your product talk to Apache?
o How does it cluster (handle multiple users?)
o How do you handle and enforce licensing?
2. Otherwise, we looked at and discussed the calendar products that David and Rosemary had been looking at:
o Byarni (?) – They mention a “web client.” What on earth is that? Product is really called Insight
o Meeting Maker – need more info
o PHProject – open source project that has good ideas but aren’t far enough along
o GroupWise – David talked to someone on the phone right before meeting. Seems viable despite the gotchas that he found:
§ GW server itself seems to run only on NW or NT, while your web server can be anything.
§ Interfaces with LDAP, but only theirs, not a standard LDAP
§ DB is proprietary
§ Licensing is by “mailbox” which is expensive (the way he explained it)
Another option is their Netmail server, which is mostly a webmail product, but does some rudimentary calendaring as well. This might be an alternative for a different kind of implementation.
o SunOne – need more info. Steve was going to try to get ahold of someone there.
o Samsung – was an Outlook based cal thing, questioning whether it can work elsewhere.
o Share360 – has proprietary Db, so it raises questions, but it looks interesting. Steve has some cost and scale figures from an email from them.
o Twig – in djn’s experience, not very quick, but could have been the environment he saw it in. It does have a good track record, however.
o UW – portal-related calendar project…are there any other sites using it? When will they be finished?
o Mirapoint – they sell whole appliances: hw and all. If that’s not weird enough, their licensing scheme is priced per protocol: that is, $x/IMAP users, $x/POP users, etc. etc.
o Brown Bear: iCal, Calcium. Still need to distinguish their products
o WebcalNG – continuation of older open source project.
o iOffice - ?
o FirstClass – the same thing that they used for a time in N Campus?
o CyberScheduler – made by the same folks who brought you….Synchronize!!!