The Linux Migration: Corporate Collaboration, Part 1
One major aspect of my migration to Linux as my primary desktop OS is how well it integrates with corporate communication and collaboration systems. Based on the feedback I’ve gotten from others on Twitter, this is a major concern for a lot of folks out there. In fact, a number of folks have indicated that this is the only thing keeping them from migrating to Linux. There are a number of different aspects to “corporate communication and collaboration,” so I’m breaking this down into multiple posts (each post will discuss one particular aspect). In this post, I’ll discuss integration with corporate e-mail.
Because corporate e-mail is such an important part of how people communicate these days, it’s a fairly significant concern when thinking of migrating to Linux. Fortunately, it’s actually pretty easy to solve.
My employer, like many companies out there, uses Office 365 for corporate e-mail. Many people think that this locks them into Outlook on the desktop side, but that’s not accurate. (Now, you may be locked into Outlook for other reasons, like calendaring—a topic I’ll touch on in part 2 of this series.) For Office 365 users, there are three paths open for accessing corporate e-mail: