PostPath Offers Exchange 5.5 Alternative
Company offers migration advice for those still holding on to older Microsoft mail servers
IT administrators looking to move from the Microsoft Exchange 5.5 e-mail message server, which Microsoft stopped supporting in 2005, are getting a helping hand from PostPath. The company released its One-Step Migration Methodology to help Exchange 5.5 users switch to the PostPath Server 3.0 e-mail and collaboration server.
PostPath aims to provide a lower-cost alternative to Exchange and describes its open source Linux-based server as a natively compatible alternative to the Microsoft offering. PostPath claims that its technology enables a flexible translation between Microsoft's ESMTP and SMTP-based e-mail transfer protocols.
PostPath Server 3.0 features "bottomless" mailboxes and support for mobile messaging devices. The server is compatible "with Active Directory, Outlook, and other Exchange servers, without requiring any connectors or plug-ins," according to an announcement issued by PostPath.
On the back end, the server provides live and incremental backup, granular restore, file-system-level replication and redundancy.
PostPath cited research from Gartner, stating that the analyst firm had reported in September of last year that at least 20 percent of Exchange systems are still the 5.5 version. IT administrators were reluctant to upgrade because of the risks of complex multistep user migrations and unresolved issues with more recent Exchange releases, according to PostPath's announcement.
-- David Kopf