Jerry put forth on 2/27/2010 9:54 AM:
On Sat, 27 Feb 2010 09:11:52 -0600 Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com> articulated:
Very small. Manual client management. No problems after the migration. If I complain, I'm sure I'll hear myself. ;) The migration I mentioned was my vanity server. If I were supporting an IMAP infrastructure at a $dayjob environment I would have never gone this route. And I probably wouldn't have been upgrading directly from Exchange 5.5 (which was EOL'd in like 1999 or 2000) to Dovecot 1.0.15. ;) I can't imagine an org that would have held onto Exch 5.5 into 2009, given that service packs and hotfixes ceased around a decade ago.
January 31, 2006 <http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2007/support/lifecycle/changes.mspx>
Exchange 5.5 was released November 1997.
EOL schedule dictated that mainstream support ended in 2003. Extended support isn't worth the cost and most orgs upgrade rather than keep old, not very well supported, M$ products around. Extended support is customer requested hotfixes and security updates. Keep in mind these security updates are prompted by customer request when they find a hole. During extended support, M$ is expending very few resources to support the EOL product. Thus, there are many security holes that go unnoticed. For all practical purposes for most customers, Exch 5.5 support effectively ended in 2003, 7 years ago.
-- Stan