Exchange Replacement

[Blake, Chris]

>> If your going to spend that much, you might as well just buy the real
>> Microsoft product rather than a look-alike.
>
>That was pretty funny! Someone on this list is recommending that you
>purchase a 'real Microsoft product'. I didn't know there was such a
>thing! ;-)

My point only being that we often consider Microsoft as big all-consuming,
all knowing, closed source, expensive, evil big-brother major corporate 
entity.  So in looking for a replacement for Exchange why replace it with a
look-alike from some other big all-consuming, ... entity.

>What is easier: Send an email to 400 servers so 40K people can read it
>or send a link to a row in a database to 40K people? ... Administer 400
servers or 2? 

If I supported 40,000 users, I would like the Oracle solution from an
administration point of view too.

>Oh, by the way, the $60/user includes the database. :-) And $60 is a
>perpetual license, if you want to buy the software for one year it is
>$15/user. Apparently we do the hosting for $10/month per user. Given
>that, I'm not quite sure how Oracle is 'so much' that spending the money
>on the 'real Microsoft product' is a better idea...

Don't know how they managed this given what Oracle charges for the database 
without the email software.  For named unlimited use connected to the web
it would be at least $36,000.  Even named-user based licensing is $300 per
user.  Maybe I could buy the email software, throw out the email component,
and just use the underlying database?  ;-)

> Why? Why don't you run them all on MySQL? It's cheaper, right?  ;-)
> Rich

Definitely cheaper! ;-)  But really, as much as Oracle costs it is a good
product.
(not to put down MySQL)

Chris Blake