[Dovecot] OT: Large corporate email systems - Exchange vs open source *nix based

[Dean]

One of the issues you'll face is that Exchange is much more than just a
mail server.  Once you've begun drinking the Micro$oft koolaid, it's
hard to refuse the rest.  It does offer a large feature set, and tight
integration with a lot of other "things".  That's both good and bad of
course ...

While I may sound like I'm touting Exchange, I think it definitely has
it's place so long as that place is well defined.  If you have
problems/issues that it will solve, then by all means, use it.  But
don't let them cram it down your throat just "because it's industry
standard" or that "we can always sue Micro$oft if it fails" or any other
such nonsense.  Use the right tool for the job.

Personally, I use Exim4/Dovecot/Spamassassin/Roundcube for my domains
and ones that I support.  I have my own auto-installer that can spin up
a fully-configured mail-server like that in about 15 minutes, bootable
on bare-metal or on a cheap VPS.  And I also recommend Exim4 (or
postfix) as the front-end just as you said ...

On 12/10/2013 09:15 AM, Charles Marcus wrote:
> There has been some whispers about considering migrating our mail
> systems to Exchange Server. I want to try to nip this in the bud.
>
> I would like to ask for some help with providing some kind of
> comparison of large(r) commercial companies use of email systems...
> specifically, those using Microsoft Exchange Server, vs those using
> open source Linux/Unix based systems, including even commercial *nix
> groupware based systems like Zimbra, as well as plain mail systems
> like dovecot, or cyrus or courier.
>
> I know that many (if they are smart) Admins that do use Exchange
> internally will use postfix (or something else linux/unix based) in
> front of it as their relayhost (for both inbound and outbound), so
> just counting the number of publicly accessible smtp servers won't be
> a good gauge.
>
> Does anyone know of any decent non-biased studies that have been done,
> hopefully relatively recently (last few years) that provide such a
> comparison?
>
> Thanks,
>


-- 
Dean Carpenter
deano is at areyes dot com
94TT :)