What's an alternative to using public folders (in Outlook)?

Question

My colleagues abuse our mail servers public folders to store (old) emails so that everyone can read them using IMAP. I'm looking into good alternatives after reading this Tech Republic article: "10 reasons why you should begin phasing out Exchange public folders"

The most important thing they need is access to emails from multiple computers without overloading our network.

So do you have any suggestions for alternatives?

If there's a nice combination with some CRM system it would be interesting too. Note: this doesn't have to be freeware, usability and efficiency are more important. The solution has to be Windows 32 bit only

Answer 1

Microsoft's answer to, and replacement for Public Folders, is Sharepoint. WSS 3 is free and will run happily on W2K3 32bit.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=D51730B5-48FC-4CA2-B454-8DC2CAF93951&displaylang=en

Answer 2

Public folders are a great resource, when used properly. Rather than look for an alternative you should look into locking down the public folders to restrict their use. There's a lot you can do to ensure the public folders are used appropriately. e.g. My users can't create messages in the public folders. They can only use calendars that I have created for them.

Answer 3

I know this doesn't allow you to read emails, but we've been using a Wiki (MediaWIki, to be exact) to store loads of information that would have normally gone around the company via email. Training some users to use it effectively is a little difficult or even impossible, but installing a rich text editor like FCKeditor made it MUCH easier.

I used Turnkey Linux to install our latest Wiki on a VMWare host and it was wonderfully easy to setup and configure.