Member Avatar for edmicman

Everyone always talks of an "Office" killer, or how something might come along and supplant Microsoft's dominance by Exchange and Windows Server. I don't think this will come anytime soon from the free or open-source crowd. Instead, I think it should come from Google.

A big reason lots of businesses can't or won't move to a gmail/gcalendar collaboration system is because everything would then sit on Google's servers. This becomes a liability risk for the business. But what if you could have Google's offerings running on your own server in your own datacenter?

What if Google offered their initial collaboration tools (email, calendar, contacts, tasks) as an installable suite? They could offer it as a package to run on a linux server, or even offer an appliance like their search appliance. Stick it in your rack, hook it up, configure, and you're set! I think companies would flock to this if it was a reasonable substitute for the Exchange setup. It would be perfect if they opened it up to allow IMAP and/or POP3 access, too, so users could use desktop clients as well. Google, are you listening?

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raised a sensible wish: a drop‑in, on‑prem Google collaboration stack to remove the “data on someone else’s servers” objection. is also right to flag the costs and complexity of that idea — the core tradeoffs aren’t just marketing, they’re engineering and operations.

Cloud SaaS products are built as distributed, multi‑tenant services with tightly coupled backends, continuous updates, and centralized monitoring. Repackaging those capabilities into a supported, single‑tenant appliance or installer would mean rearchitecting components, building a new support and update model, and accepting fragmented deployments and slower feature roll‑out. Google’s product strategy instead focuses on a hosted suite that delivers those operational benefits; see Google Workspace for the current cloud offering (workspace.google.com).

For organizations that must keep mail and calendars on their own hardware, realistic options today are:

  • Use a mature on‑prem groupware platform (Zimbra, Kolab, Kopano, SOGo) and pair it with proper backup, HA, and ActiveSync/IMAP gateways. Zimbra is a widely used choice (zimbra.com).
  • Adopt a hybrid model: keep sensitive archives or mailboxes on‑prem while using cloud mail for the rest, synced with directory services and SSO.
  • If moving to cloud but retaining control, evaluate data‑residency, retention/eDiscovery (Vault), and directory sync tools so policies meet compliance demands.

Practical next steps: document legal/compliance requirements, pilot a small group with either an on‑prem product or a cloud trial, test Outlook/mobile client compatibility, and measure total cost of ownership (licences + ops + backups + support). The decision is usually about operational control versus the utility and reduced ops burden of cloud — not just R&D spend.

Member Avatar for mattmoo

Well thanks for that enlightening suggestion, however, i don't think you have thought this through properly.
From a programmers point of view your idea creates lots of problems google does not need.
Google has several massive money making products without ever having to create software that runs on any machine (i.e. their products are all web based). Any programmer will tell you that web based software from one server to another is hassle, let alone creating software for every different type of Server and OS. Going down that road is stupid as it means Google would have to invest massive amounts of money in R & D which at present it doesn't have to as it already has a great business model that does not involve Server/Desktop applications, they have even created a rival office application that is web based.

If its not broke don't fix it, i think your just annoyed that you have to pay so much for exchange which i definatly agree with :)

Thanks
mattmoo

Member Avatar for atlantis12

please add to your site and email me your reciprical link that I will add to thank you!

We are a great Financial Link exchange company.

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