Fud Buster Friday #15 - Exchange 2007, What? You thought Clustering would Work this time?

Continuing from my post yesterday, I listened to a call from CIO magazine about Risks and Mitigation Strategies for Exchange 2007. Professional courtesy, obvious interest for my benefit, but what I wasn't expecting was a complete sales pitch from Dell. I really wanted to know what does or doesn't work and how they get around it, it's the geek in me, probably should have realized this wasn't a CTO call.

Well the good news is I did get some of that information. Bad news was I had to listen to the presenter, Samy Aboel-Nil, Director, Product Management for Dell MessageOne and it's co-founder, about why Dell is better equipped to handle the task of migrating, yes he used the word migrating, your infrastructure from 2000/2003 to 2007. To be fair he sounded a bit under the weather.

Maybe some want to use Dell, but I am still bothered by the fact that if you have IT staff and don't trust them to do your work, then why have them at all? They are too busy? Why because the existing infrastructure has problems perhaps? It's not because of all the cool new functions they are rolling out in 85% of your companies.

So the 1st graphic is about the idea that Exchange 2007 doesn't do everything although you might think that because of their FUD. Sure neither does Domino, but you know Microsoft has your customer convinced that Exchange can do it all. Granular real time retention? Interesting choice of words. And Exchange has a comprehensive high availability solution.Which leads me to graphic #2.

Clustering in 3 flavors, none of which covers all bases and some of which is no better than previous versions. Cluster Continuous Replication still can not be done unless the servers are close to each other physically? And they want you to work off the Cloud with Azure? With what? A Mini Cloud outside your office or home?

Still that's better than Standby Continuous Replication which will lose data and take 30 minutes to kick in! Amazing! Where do I sign up for such sloth like functionality?

Lotus Domino servers fail over immediately and without the user knowing or caring it happens. Even across the US on 2 different platforms, Windows and AIX in our case, it just works and in seconds. And Microsoft boasts 30 minutes?!!!!

Was your CIO on this call?

Just got off a call from CIO magazine in which Dell was hawking their MessageOne solution.

I am not happy about this. Maybe it's my fault, I expect more from CIO, or maybe I expect more from other CIOs.

If I wanted a sales pitch I could call Dell or anyone else to do it, so why bother me with this? Enticing it was to discuss issues corporations face when migrating to Exchange 2007 with other CIOs but that wasn't what it became.

The presenter not only related why 2003 was so bad, but why 2007 in some cases still is and only Dell has the services to help you. You'd think IBM Global Services gave it.

Although it was to be about Dell the last few minutes of the hour, it was about Dell from about 1/2 way through the call. You can try to listen here, but I don't vouch the link will work.

Companies are trying to conserve money, don't you think they could let their own employees do some work for a change? Everyone is busy, but Domino admins get their servers upgraded regularly and easily. Why do Exchange companies take 3 years to finish an installation then months at a time to do upgrades?

Both systems are unique and difficult in their own way and have similar issues of backup, down time slots, resources but somehow I never hear about Exchange admins getting servers updated the day a release comes out like Domino.

CIO should be providing harder sessions and questions to the CIO community out there than what is shown. In the last few magazine issues the stress has been CIOs need to do more with less, be proactive, reach for greater returns, yet they then provide wimpy sessions like this one. This could have been a solid session on what to do, how to do it or when to do it, but instead it was a "let Dell do it for you, as much or as little as you need".

IBM probably does similar sessions and I am against that as well if done purely in a sales selfish way. Speak to be understood, not to sell. No case study or client references were used either for recent work. If you do your job properly, they will buy from you or at least listen in the future.

Lotus Foundation Server Micro Box

We all saw Mike Rhodin pick up the server from a mail envelope on stage at Lotusphere. Some of us went to see one up close and get more detail of it.

Some of us became Nitix partners. And received one in our offices.

Nice, small, reasonably efficient, but limited to 5 Domino/client licenses for usage!?

I had a client who needed it for 10 people. No can do. So close yet so far.

Understandably if you only had a 1gb ram, 1ghz processor, 90GB hard drive laptop you may not want to run Domino on it either. I would think about it if it is ONLY going to be running as a mail server though.

Sure I would like it to run Sametime too but that overhead is not going to fly. Yet.

Who needs another doorstop? Let's do the math and try to work out how this will end:

Dell Micro server optiplex 755 more beefier power for about $700 or a rough equivalent for about $450.
+ Windows 2008 Basic server with 5 cals $971
+ 5 more Cals roughly $50 each = $250.
+ Domino Server Express Collaboration version at $141 per user, or $1,410.
+ backup capacity or external drives $200
+ Anti-virus or santi spam software $200 between software and licensing.
Total: $4,000 or $3,750 at a low end server version not including shipping or taxes.

How much does the Foundation Server cost?
With 2 years of support for hardware and software (1st year is included we add 1 year)
+ 10 Domino license and client licenses
+ OS (Linux) plus 10 user licenses
+ CRM solution plus other software for file print sharing
+ backup software solution
+ autonomic self correcting software solution
+ 250GB external drive for the failover/backup
+ Antivirus and antispam software from Kaspersky
=============
Total: $2,700 customer price, not including shipping or taxes

Yes, I get a weaker server on the Foundation side but nothing comes close in size or portability. Portability is key in Florida or for the person on the go doing dmeos or just ad hoc networks.

But can I sell it to my client? No
Not structured for sellng with more than 5 user licenses.

Tune in next quarter or year when a hopefully beefier version is available.

But if you need one for a small office of 5 or less email me and it will get delivered within a few days.