Hello,
I'm a quite happy grommunio user for approx 2 years now.
I've got a professional background with Exchange 2007 and newer, and also used the giraffe and it's fork for myself before discovering Grommunio.
These days, I've encountered major issues with Microsoft force-pushing "Outlook new" which is basically a webapp, and which does not support Exchange On-Premises nor of course Grommunio unless going the IMAP way. There is not even caldav support, so no way to get a calendar with on-premises solutions. Users "discover" the "Outlook new" interface unless disabled by GPO. The Exchange On-Premises support is "planned" since more than a year.
I've got a couple of contacts who also use Outlook for Mac, which relies on EWS, and which Microsoft plans to sunset in 2026 AFAIK. Btw, Outlook for Mac has major issues for years (mem leaks when using on-premises exchange only, going up to 60GB of swap usage).
Recently I've read that the new Exchange Server SE is going be a rolling release that requires subscriptions even on-premises. This moves makes the on-premises solutions less attractive, since they still require Windows Licence + Exchange licences + user CALs + subsciptions.
With Exchange 2019 being EOL in october this year, and Outlook classic EOL in 2019, I come to the conclusion that Microsoft pushes it's Office 365 strategy forcefully, by making usage of on-premises solutions a nightmare for every sysadmin.
I guess I'm not the only one who noticed those "strategic" Microsoft moves.
Now my question is, what's the future for on-premises mail servers that talk exchange protocol ?
I really hope Grommunio to fill that void left by Exchange 2019, since I value data sovereignity and just don't want the "subscription world" Microsoft pushes, but it seems that they make it extra hard for third party systems to be interoperable.
I wonder if Grommunio has planned to support JMAP protocol (RFC8620), which does more or less what MAPI does without the technological debt, but open source ?
Again, this would only work if JMAP is to be supported by the android/iphone (which as of today is only done via third party apps). I'm pretty sure that google/apple prefer keeping ther closed ecosystem instead of opening.
And of course I wonder what all "professional outlook users" will do once outlook classic will be EOL. I cannot image those who have multiple email accounts using multiple webmails, nor do I imagine that they'll use thunderbird, because the look and feel is often a "standard user repulsive".
Anyway, this is just my wednesday rant about Microsoft, Google and Apple.
