exchange - opengroupware cost comparison: do you think you are competitive?

helge, in a mail in december you mentioned, that zidestore is not by skyrix and therefor the price
is so high, but you anyway felt  that the price is competive.

how would you argue to get your boss to use opengroupware, if he says:
- zidestore has not trial
- zidestore seems to be not the same quality than exchange
  (just look at the mailing list feedback)
- i have to pay more hours to set up opengroupware
  so i can afford the 600-1500 eur for the exchange server
- the client price difference is minimal (10-20 eur/user)
  if a user just wastes one hour for playing with zidestore
  he lost me this 10-20 eur
- we anyway have a windows server
- the prices are so that opengroupware needs 5 years
  to (maybe) penetrate the market, get a huge userbase
  and therefor a good product quality.
- you pay some amount, and you can any number of
  company external users on your server.
- paying licenses for TRYING an opensource solution:
  you are crazy!

and the decision was: exchange. it has a nice calendar, and webmail.

i have to admit, i ran out of arguments. arguments on the pro side were:
- we anyway have a linux box
- server is free
- web-client is free
- there is no free client, but an outlook plugin
- we want to support open source by using it

so ... now i'm wondering:
- who makes zidestore?
- how do you define "competitive"
- what is the biggest (number of users really using)
  opengroupware installation

personally i think if you have a free zidestore-connector until it really works, and promise that
you don't charge more than 10eur per user if it really works, than i guess you get very soon a
huge user base and are in every government project.

-solo

ps prices:
- http://www.epinions.com/Productivity_Software_Suites-Groupware/pp_~3
- http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/howtobuy/enterprise.asp

for small user:
exchange (in eur, to us-$ mul by 1.2):
 600	server
 0	clients (5 included)

opengroupware:
 0	server
 275	zidestore

for 250 user:
40	zidestore 
28-55	exchange


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