Migrating 'TO' exchange

[Witchdoctor]

Originally Posted by ArcaneMagus

I would tend to agree with Witchdoctor, if they have let their mail system get so far out of maintenance that it hasn't been upgraded in over 2 years they should really be looking at a cloud based solution where upgrading and maintenance is not their concern.

However if they have some business reason for having onsite email then you might want to try installing the latest Zimbra in a VM and demoing the web interface's features alongside an Exchange web interface. As far as the user is concerned the only difference between Zimbra (NE) and Exchange is how they interact with it, and most of the time that would be through Outlook. If they are using the web interface however the Zimbra one is far superior from what I have seen of the Exchange one.

If you can't convince them to stay with Zimbra and get a recent version (a LOT has changed since their version), do at least tell them that going to Exchange 2007 would be a waste of money when 2010 is out

I think we are all on the same page here. As far as Outlook Web Access for Exchange 2007 versus the latest version of Zimbra, the Zimbra web access is superior.. No doubt about it.. You can run a Zimbra web session in IE, Chrome, Firefox, etc without a loss of functionality. However, Exchange 2010 is a totally revamp with Outlook Web Access (now Outlook Web Application). It has new additional like modifying your personal metadata in the Global Address List (i.e. Active Directory) as well as cross browser enhacements that it did not have before. So if you compare, you really need to list your requirements and compare the latest version of Zimbra to the latest version of Exchange 2010 especially on the web access side of things.

I am personally glad to see Zimbra in the picture. It makes all companies force themselves to be more innovated around messaging...

Mark