[PLUG] Email on Linux vs MS

[alan]

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Anthony Schlemmer wrote:

> When I first read about what sort of hoops an admin had to go through to 
> restore an Exchange server I was totally baffled as to why any 
> organization would invest money in such a system. Email has become a 
> fairly important business tool and I can't belive that any company 
> wouldn't want that system running on the most reliable platform 
> available i.e. Unix or Linux IMHO.

The reasons for this are that people who understand the problems and 
technologies are no longer the people who actually make the decisions.

A number of years ago, computers became "buzzword complient".  Managers 
could impress their friends by the size of their IT budgets. (Not that 
they knew how to use it...)  They were told by Microsoft sales people that 
in order to be "cool" they had to run Exchange for mail.  Because they 
wanted to be in the "in-crowd" and wanted to make their golfing buddies 
think that they were clued, they told their IT staff to use it or else.  
When told just how much their Microsoft habit was costing, they went into 
denial. They would just lash out at the IT department until they went away 
and/or gave up.

There is no good reason to run it, but so many upper management types have 
been conned into doing it it is hard to get them to change to something 
stable.