Help me avoid Exchange

[Travis Roy]

 From my understanding, you're in the engineering group at this company 
and you keep your own separate mail server?

If Exchange is setup, would you have to maintain it at all?

I say if it's not your problem, let them do what they want.

I've been at a number of companies that used Exchange. As long as I got 
my email, and it wasn't up to me to fix the server every time it broke, 
I could care less what it ran.

BTW, management -LOVES- the shared calendars. I was always forced to use 
them.

Paul Lussier wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> Up until now I've been fairly lucky in maintaining our IMAP server on
> Cyrus.  However, we've identified a project which we'd like to move
> forward to better construct our mail architecture.  When we proposed
> this project to our VP of Engineering, he rightfully asked the
> question of, "Why should we bother continuing to maintain anything
> related to mail when we have an IT group to do just that?"
> 
> Now, this VP is no business weenie.  He is extremely intelligent and
> highly technical (PhD from MIT at something like 22 or 23, he's now
> ~29).  When we mentioned that a) they'd want to put us all on
> Exchange, and b) they're not competant to pull this off themselves,
> his reaction was more or less, "While I hate the prospect of Exchange
> as much as the next guy, neither of those are 'my problem'!" 
> 
> In other words, he's more than happy to see the IT group sink rather
> than swim.  However, I'd rather do the right thing, just do the work
> and not waste a bunch of people's time or the company's money with
> failed (possibly outsourced) solutions, just to have to, six months
> from now, do the work anyway.
> 
> I need to come up with (currently) valid reasons why it's a bad idea
> to move engineering over to an Exchange-based IMAP server from a
> linux/cyrus-based IMAP server.  So, I'm asking for help from those of
> you who have current, relevant experience with running small companies
> (30-50 people) on Exchange.  Btw, Engineering currenrtly doesn't have
> calendaring, and most of us would use Exchange purely as an IMAP
> server, not using the "added benefits" Exchange burdens you with.
> 
> Any and all help *gratefully* accepted!
> 
> Thanks.
>