Am not an expert in MS licensing - the whole thing _must_be convoluted/confusing on purpose - but when I compared Zimbra/GroupWise/Exchange, I thought Exchange came out higher than what you have. I think, based on our numbers (not too much higher than yours), we were going to have to do Exchange Enterprise (was either CPU/memory, or size of the mailstore). We also would have needed the Exchange CALs, plus would have needed to upgrade/buy Outlook 2003/2007, plus I thought there were Server CALs as well... and yes, as previous post added, the A/V (more than one level should be required, just having it at the gateway IMO is not sufficient), backup (Exchange agent), etc. It just got too complex/expensive...
Anyway, even though Zimbra (pricing-wise) was not much cheaper after 3 years+, I was able to justify it in a number of ways, such as:
- much faster pace of development for Zimbra... versus Exchange 2003 to 2007, that's a long time between major releases
- better cross-platform support, as we have windows/linux/mac desktops
- purchased a mix of prof. and std. licenses, as we'll only have mgmt./staff who travel use Outlook to connect, the rest can use the ajax web client or IMAP
- multiple ways to access your data/information, not so closed a silo  |