More and more municipalities, including many smaller ones, are moving away from Microsoft Exchange and adopting the European open-source alternative grommunio. One of them is the Radolfshausen Joint Municipality, located east of Göttingen.
There, a grommunio partner now ensures that over 40 municipal mailboxes in Radolfshausen operate smoothly and are reliably accessible to the approximately 7,500 residents.
Goodbye, Microsoft
In the “Samtgemeinde” (the term does not come from the German word for velvet „Samt“ but from the word “gesamt“), eleven municipalities joined forces in 1973 to carry out the tasks assigned to them in a centralized and efficient manner. This is nothing unusual; in Lower Saxony alone, there are over a hundred such joint municipalities.
Like many other of them, Radolfshausen had always relied on Microsoft, but discontent had recently grown over rising costs, security issues, and lack of digital sovereignty resulting in massive dependency. The final impetus for action came from price increases by the provider, recommendations from the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), and the manufacturer’s data protection-related pressure to move to the cloud.
No Alternative: grommunio
Following an in-depth analysis supported by grommunio partner C4 Computer Consulting GmbH, people in charge determined that grommunio was a viable alternative to Exchange for the joint municipality.
The most decisive factor however was the interaction of the server components Postfix, Rspamd, and Piler (for mail, anti-spam, and archiving). Conversations with other grommunio reference customers, such as the city of Lengerich, helped a lot, too. Other providers and workarounds could not meet the requirements.
Open-source competition tips the scales
When the Oldenburg Municipal Data Processing Association (Kommunale Datenverarbeitung Oldenburg, KDO) participated in the nationwide open-source competition for public administration with Rspamd, the decision was finally made in favor of grommunio. The competition is aimed “at public administrations at the federal, state, and local levels that use open-source software (OSS) as the key to the digital transformation of their administration.”
Anti-spam already integrated with Rspamd
This role is also a perfect fit for grommunio, especially since the open-source groupware already has the Rspamd spam filter built in — a major advantage over “traditional” Exchange solutions and a significant simplification for administrators and users in their day-to-day work. “In the digitization of public administration, ‘Rspamd as an open-source spam filter represents a significant technical advancement,’ according to the KDO.”
“Very stable right from the start”
But modern spam filters aren’t the only reason why it’s worth switching to open-source software. Today, several months and experiences later, administrator Lothar Jagemann says: “Migrating from Exchange to grommunio is feasible. While changes are certainly necessary when undertaking such a project, grommunio has been running very stably right from the start. As a result, employee acceptance is very high. In the last 3 months, we’ve only had to renew 2 profiles.”
“Migration is worth it” – “a successful and robust alternative to Exchange”
According to Jonas Wucherpfennig, deputy head of the department, this is clear proof that “it pays not to always take or stick to the easiest path of least resistance. Today, we can definitely say: grommunio is a successful, intuitive, and digitally savvy alternative to traditional exchange systems for public administration.”
Migration over a Weekend
To ensure the migration went smoothly, the administrators began with a test phase in which they exported data from and imported it into the test system. Subsequent tests were conducted using the latest 64-bit versions of Outlook (LTSC, 2024) and various line-of-business applications. Once it was clear that no unexpected problems would arise, the actual migration was completed over a weekend—in the background and without users noticing a thing.
“You just have to give it a try”
And it all happened very quickly: the migration was completed just a few months after the project began. “Anyone undertaking a migration like this quickly realizes that switching mail servers is the easiest way to break away from Microsoft, at least partially. You just have to give it a try,” explains Lothar Jagemann.
Significantly lower operating costs
“It’s clear that a migration like this, costs more initially than the current solution—that’s normal with any migration. But even now, with everything running smoothly, the operating costs are significantly lower than with Microsoft,” explains Wucherpfennig.
“At the same time, however, we now have much more functionality, even though the work processes have remained the same. Okay, we in IT now have more responsibility, but that usually also means faster solutions for users. And the outlook is great, because if we want to, we can also introduce Mattermost, Jitsi, and Nextcloud—grommunio provides these components, but we’re not using them yet.”
Webmail Secured with Keycloak and 2FA
Today, over 40 people are already using the grommunio product—in administration, IT, municipalities, and schools. The system utilizes the mail server itself, the webmail interface secured with Keycloak two-factor authentication, the built-in archiving solution, and various anti-spam techniques. In addition to the aforementioned Rspamd, Fail2Ban (servers of unwanted senders can be completely blocked upon request) as well as white and blacklists are also used to spare employees as much as possible from unwanted emails from online casinos, medical product sellers, and princes from distant lands.
Wishes and Challenges
There are also wishes for future development. Users and administrators would like more finely tuned access controls, for example for calendars: During the migration, it turned out, for instance, that write access to a calendar still requires the entire mailbox to be shared.
In the backend as well, the Radolfshausen team would like a few features, though these are currently handled by scripts and automations from C4, such as when cleaning up old (deleted) emails. Currently, such tasks are handled by simple Bash scripts via cron jobs. Partners like C4 then ensure modularity and update security. New users would certainly appreciate more features and helpful tooltips in the admin interface. Additionally, there is a desire for more detailed release notes and information in roadmaps and updates.
Transparency
For the joint municipality, however, the open-source and community ethos also plays a major role: “The transparency in software development is simply outstanding; the community tests the software, all information is shared, and new features are only released once they have passed user testing.
Only then are they incorporated into the enterprise versions with support via updates.” In Radolfshausen, people are familiar with the concept from other OSS tools such as Firefox, FileZilla, Notepad++, KeePass, Proxmox, Relution, or even from the Raspberry Pi minicomputer and educational project.
Hard to put a price on: Strategic benefits, independence
Even without fully utilizing grommunio’s capabilities, the benefits for the joint municipal administration are clear: It follows the BSI’s recommendations, uses digitally sovereign, European software, and relies on modern, transparent, and traceable open-source software. All of these are benefits that are hard to put a price on, according to those in charge.
Take advantage of grommunio’s licensing structure: Pricing.