For my small office, I was looking for a long time for a PIM solution that let me share data, so my secretary and I can share contacts, appointments and so on. Being a KDE user, I've heard about the Kroupware project and wait its completion. But when I saw how complicated is the architecture and setup of the Kolab server 1.0 (the server side of the project), I gave up, waiting for an easier to deploy Kolab 2.0. In any case, the Kolab stuff was clearly too much for my needs. Fortunately in the KDE wiki I've found some piece of IRC conversation where they were talking about sharing data without the Kolab infrastructure... mmm so interesting!

For small offices and needs, you can have Kontact use shared data without the need of installing the Kolab server or another groupware backend. It can work with just an IMAP server, that can be easily set up.

My scenario is a server with Debian unstable and KDE 3.4. I access Kontact and other fabulous GNU/Linux apps from windows using Cygwin/X, while waiting Wine project to be able to run the last Windows programs I need (and that are not available under GNU/Linux). I want to share contacts, events, todo, notes with my secretary.