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Friday
Jan162009
Switching from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps: Pre-Switch
Friday, January 16, 2009 at 7:43 PM Tomorrow we're switching our company from Microsoft Hosted Exchange to Google Apps. This should be an interesting transition and I hope to blog again in a week or two after we're Microsoft-free!
Background: A few years ago, frustrated with a standard Outlook/ IMAP/ Linux mail server configuration, we signed up with USA.net Hosted Exchange. At first we were thrilled. It was a much more elegant messaging/ collaboration solution. Outlook is a whole different (and more powerful) animal when you hook it up to an Exchange server. However, as our company has grown and cloud-computing has also grown, we've become more and more frustrated with our hosted Exchange setup. Here are some of our top frustrations we're hoping to alleviate migrating to Google Apps:
- We're still on Exchange Server 2003 and USA.net doesn't seem in any hurry to upgrade us to Exchange Server 2007. Even if they would, what would it break? Would it be worth the hassle?
- The Outlook Web Access interface for Exchange 2003 is horrible. Go figure, it was designed back in 2002, seven years ago! Employees trying to access their e-mail on the road or from home where they don't have the Outlook fat client installed can't search their messages, have a sub-par calendar, can't access their old e-mail (see #6 below) and generally have the pleasure of using a horrible, clunky interface. Oh, and it doesn't really work properly unless you're using IE.
- Installing and configuring Outlook on each desktop is a pain. Some of our production employees & contractors need a corporate issued e-mail account but don't really have a dedicated computer we can install Outlook onto, so they are forced to use the horrible OWA website (see #2 above).
- It's expensive. Something like $25/user/month which only includes 100MB of storage. 100MB is nothing. We pay a lot of extra money for extra storage, plus fees for each user that wants to sync their PDA or Smart Phone. Our administrators are constantly getting requests from users to "up" their mailbox size. Because it's so expensive we dole out space in 100MB chunks which doesn't seem to last long. We ask people to remove large attachments from their mailboxes, but then they forget to empty the deleted items, so this doesn't really work well. Furthermore, once they delete these messages they can't get to them later if they need them sometime down the road. Bottom line, users don't want to delete email and shouldn't have to just to keep our IT department from going broke.
- People bitch about Outlook more than any other desktop application. It's slow and crashes frequently.
- Outlook auto-archive is a terrible idea. This "feature" removes messages from the Exchange server and puts them into a .PST file on the user's local computer. I thought the point of the Exchange server was to keep all the e-mails in the cloud, on the server? Why would you want to permanently remove them from the server and place them into some arcane C:\documents and settings\application data\something\very\confusing\ folder on the user's local PC? Now the IT folks have to worry about auto-archive settings on every PC that has Outlook installed. What if the PC's hard drive crashes? Bye-bye old e-mail! The only reason I can think this "feature" was developed was to conserve HDD space on the Exchange server because server storage is so damn expensive? (See #4 above).
- Outlook search is terrible. Even with the new Outlook 2007 search add-in, it pales in comparison to Gmail. Because of this, many users try to organize their Outlook using folders. At last count I had over 500 folders. Now when I Ctrl + Shift + V (shortcut to move) an e-mail from my Inbox I have to pick from 500 folders which is very time consuming.
I'm sure there are many more frustrations, but you get the idea. I'm also pretty sure there will be a lot of little things that drive us crazy about Google Apps. It will be interesting to see what everyone thinks on Monday.
Update on Saturday, January 24, 2009 at 8:09 PM by
Casey Schorr
Casey Schorr
It's been a week since we made the switch. I'm ecstatic to report we couldn't be happier and wish we'd made this switch a long time ago. See my post-implementation recap.
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Reader Comments (2)
Viddler did this about a year ago.. Microsoft exchange was running out of disk space, general uptime issues, Mac/Entourage compatibility issues with todo items and calender, spam problems...
Moved to Google Apps.. and haven't looked back.
Without a doubt it's made us a stronger team. A central repository for document on Google is very nice. Scheduling is amazing. So much better then a Microsoft dependent solution.
You're going to be so happy!
Rob, or should I call you "sandieman", nice to see you are reading my new blog! I'm a big fan of Viddler and we've started using it at Printfection for all of our 'how to' and screencasts. Keep up the good work! If you're ever out in Colorado I'd love to meet you. Scott Menzer is a good friend of mine and he always talks about you and Viddler (always good talk).
It's been only one week and everyone is so glad we made the switch! There are very few issues and everything is so much smoother and easier now that we're on Google Apps.