Scalix is a relatively new player that from the get-go targetted the entreprise market early on. It was originally developed on top of HP OpenMail, and was licensed from HP. On top of standard messaging and groupware features it supports a lot of enterprise-grade functionality such as LDAP and AD support, high availability, multi-tenant management, support for Outlook sync and mobile devices, and many others. It features a nice, slick webmail client, but supports Outlook and mobile devices, on top of other open source clients such as Evolution, Thunderbird and many others.

Scalix was recently bought by Xandros and is now offered as a hosted instance, commercial turn-key product or a community-supported downloadable product. Because of its rich features, it should be considered as a contender in any enterprise deployment.

Open-Xchange is a messaging and collaboration server that is OEMed by many service providers because of its rich features, slick webmail client and ease of setup and use. It supports many open standards protocols and supports Outlook sync via a commercial extension. Originally a commercial product that was bundled with Novell’s Linux Messaging product (SuSE Linux Open-Xchange or SLOX), it features messaging, group calendars/addressbook and scheduling, identity management (support for LDAP and AD), document management, portals,  and more.

Recent releases highlight its social networking capabilities with the ability to share information with Social Networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. It will also soon feature support for mobile clients via Exchange’s Active Sync technology. The software is available as a community-supported product, a commercially-supported product, a turnkey appliance or as a hosted instance.

Definitely a mature, feature-rich solution that is in many ways a good choice for midsized to large organizations. Should be in the evaluation shortlist if you are looking for a messaging and collaboration platform for your organization.

Zarafa is a relatively new player that is being marketed as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Exchange. That means you can replace your existing Exchange installation with Zarafa and your existing Outlook clients and mobile devices wouldn’t know the difference. It supports Outlook’s MAPI protocol as well as the ActiveSync protocol for mobile devices. It has a slick webmail which mimics the look and feel of Outlook Web Access, and makes available a nice set of APIs so third party developers can integrate and sync data with the platform.

Some popular open source applications that can sync data with Zarafa include SugarCRM (CRM) and Alfresco (document management). It is available in community as well as commercial versions, with some of the more advanced features only available in the commercial editions. The nice thing though is that the Outlook sync, (unlike many in the market) is available as well in the community supported (ie FREE) version.

Its rich feature set, compatibility with Outlook, ease of use and management ensures that this solution should be on the short list looking for a lower cost alternative to Microsoft Exchange.

RightNow’s suite of applications includes multi-channel Service, Sales,
Marketing, Customer Feedback Management, Voice Automation, and
Analytics. Rightnow started off as a traditional on-premise CRM  vendor but now seems to focus on On-Demand.

Pros: Really strong in customer service; rich feature set in customer service type applications and workflows; close partnerships with telephony vendors make it a good choice for a contact center. 

Cons: Premium pricing; can be expensive over time; not much third party support developing on the platform.

Overall its rich feature set, mature platform and really unique features make it a viable choice for companies with complex sales and support processes. Companies looking for extensibility might want to look at other alternatives. 

Zoho CRM is a new entrant to the SaaS CRM market and is gaining a lot of interest I believe because of its low cost, and its relationship and integration with the Zoho suite of online SaaS applications. Its feature set seems to be primarily focused on sales force automation (like Salesforce a few releases back) and has some basic features to extend and customize its features and functionality. Updates like many of the Zoho applications are frequent. 

Pros: low cost; integration with Zoho apps; unique features such as online spreadsheet integration; good choice as an entry level solution. 

Cons: little or no extensions or 3rd party support, basic APIs, functionality geared towards small teams.

Overall for workgroup CRM, or for small companies with limited workflow customization or system integration requirements, Zoho CRM is a great choice and offers great value (first 3 users are free!).

Technically speaking LongJump positions itself as an application platform when it started out which can easily be configured for CRM (this is the opposite of Salesforce.com which started out focused on CRM and is now repositioning as a platform provider, or Zoho which is more of a suite of different apps than an integrated platform). Longjump is easily extensible and configurable, and templates exist to reconfigure the application into something else. 

Pros: Highly extensible and configurable; integrated platform. 

Cons: Seems to have a low customer base, small company, not as well known as other competitors, purely online service; lock in a real danger.

Overall a promising vendor although not as well known as its competitors. May suit companies who feel that customization features of Salesforce.com and Netsuite too limited or too cumbersome or complex, or for ISVs who want to develop vertical apps on a rebrandable, turnkey, on-demand application platform.

Salesforce.com is an acknowledged pioneer in Software-as-a-Service applications and market leader in CRM. When you sign up for the service you can choose from different editions–ie Personal, Group, Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited. The system itself is made up of several modules:
Sales, Service & Support, Partner Relationship Management, Marketing, Content, Ideas and Analytics. Updates are done acording to seasons of the year–so they have a Winter release, Spring release and so on. 

Pros: Large user base; stable company; long term viability; mature infrastructure and feature set; really nice, easy-to-use UI, rich ecosystem of third party apps to extend functionality; highly configurable and extensible platform called Force.com. 

Cons: Purely online service; lock in a real danger; the really nice features are only available in the high end editions; expensive for large deployments.

Overall, companies looking for a CRM platform can't go wrong with Salesforce.com, but you better have the budget for it.

Zimbra’s entry into the groupware/messaging market is the most interesting in that they really rethought the architecture and design of a groupware product. Zimbra is positioned as messaging and collaboration 2.0 with its mashup platform (via Zimlets which allow the product to share and sync data with third-party data sources and service providers) and its slick AJAX-powered webmail and offline client. On top of this, they still offer standard messaging and collaboration features, along with many high-end, enterprise-grade features (only available in their commercial product) such as LDAP and AD support, high availability, archiving, support for Outlook sync and mobile devices, and many others.

Like Scalix, the company was recently bought by Yahoo and is now offered as a hosted instance (although news reports indicate that Yahoo may be selling Zimbra soon), commercial turn-key product or a community-supported downloadable product.

Like Zarafa, integration with other open source products exist like SugarCRM, Alfresco, Asterisk (IP-based PBX) and XMPP (instant messaging). Like Open-Xchange and Scalix, definitely should be on the short list for any midsized to large company looking at deploying a collaboration platform. Its extensibility and rich UI make it a good choice for companies looking for a platform to integrate with form-based and workflow applications making it my choice for companies wishing to look for an alternative to Lotus Domino. A solid offering.