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

[Dean]

Actually yes :)  A former company was a mergers/acquisitions maniac, so
we faced fairly often.  We took the easy way out, not actually merging
the Exchange instances, but simply migrating user mailboxes into the
main distributed/redundant system.  Sometimes reused the acquired HW to
expand the main system.

Migration is much much easier than merging ...  With merging you run
into issues with the mailstore databases etc.  Icky.

On 12/10/2013 10:44 AM, Charles Marcus wrote:
> Thanks for the feedback...
>
> Have you had any experience with two separate companies 'merging'
> their separate Exchange instances?
>
> The reason I ask is, it seems to me that in many cases, it might
> actually be easier to migrate a non Exchange system into an existing
> Exchange system, than merging two separate Exchange systems...
>
> True or false? Or 'it depends'?
>
> Thanks again
>
> On 2013-12-10 9:49 AM, Dean <deano-dovecot at areyes.com> wrote:
>> 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 ...