While this may be a good choice for this hospital, the article compares a recent entry into the enterprise messaging space with a 10 year old application. The only reference to a newer release of Exchange is cost. For the hospital at 700 mailboxes, cost may be a factor. For other enterprises with varying needs, Exchange may come out less expensive.
The hospital did not have to limit the size of 'in-boxes', but rather mailboxes. Clearly they were using the 'Standard' version of Exchange 5.5. There was a more expensive Enterprise version without that limit. Later versions of Exchange eliminate this issue of course.
I realize this case study is migrating from Exchange 5.5, but it seems weak to base a comparison of messaging solutions separated by so many years.
William Lefkovics
|
Does Verizon's Voyager stack up to the iPhone? |
|
|
5 IT skills that won't boost your salary 
[1,407]
Women 4 times more likely than men to cough up personal info [589]
Japan's 10 funniest tech-related commercials [Videos] [407]
Throwing away a promo CD is "unauthorized distribution"? [1,265]
Adults too quick to dismiss educational video games [682]
Attack of the iPhone clones [Slideshow] [578]
10 things IT needs to know about AJAX [1,258]
This Year's 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries [Slideshow] [409]
|
|
NO apples and oranges
If you want to buy just any fruit, and apples are 50% cheaper than oranges, what would you do? Fact is that Postpath at 50% of the cost delivers a service that is just as good or even better.
How much did PostPath paid this article...
Why don't you compare Mac OS 10 to Windows 95? This article is riduculus.
Next thing we are going to hear from this hosptial is how they just upgraded their 486 Windows 98 computers to powerful Lindow based workstations that cost $100ea at Fry's.
When I see a business running Exchange 5.5 in 2008, that means there were some serious budgeting issues the last 5-7 years, not to mention lack of IT leadership. Worst yet, the hosptial is being run by incompetent senior executive with no vision with technology.
Fire the people in charge!!!
Go sign up for Google Bussiness Apps, maybe the hospital can save another 50%, and go from 1 staffer managing email to none!
Hurts, doesn't it.
You are punishing people for their inability to continue on the proprietary path of escalating costs and vendor lock-in. This is not a migration to Open Source, it's a stampede. The "Please Fasten Your Seat-belt" sign for your business environment is now ON.
Shill argument...
" the hosptial is being run by incompetent senior executive with no vision with technology."
You are acting like a Microsoft shill saying something so inflammatory. Since when is IT leadership and a vision with technology mean mindlessly upgrading Microsoft products?
They didn't compare the technologies other than to say this is what we had, and this is what we get now. Sure if their technology budget was unlimited Exchange upgrade might make sense. But being a hospital I would prefer they try to keep costs low and preferentially enhance medical services, not pay extra for marginally productive IT enhancements.
Let's compare Windows 95 to Mac OS X
If you were currently using Win/95 (I know a company that still uses Win/3.11) and you wanted to migrate to Mac OS X, that might be a good or bad choice. You might save on licensing costs over going to Vista, but you would probably pay more for hardware and might have compatibility issues.
Rolling out new technology just to be legacy free is silly. You have to do a full scale analysis of the cost benefits associated with migration in your environment. I know of a company that migrated their point of sale systems from a DOS based system because they felt it was time to upgrade. The old system worked really really well for their particular business and was very efficient in their environment. When they switched there were no suitable solutions so they had to have a custom point of sale system developed. The new system didn't work well at all and the whole experience ended up costing them a lot more than they bargained for. The lesson that can be learned is this, technology is a tool. If it isn't broke don't fix it, and if it is then you have to find the solution that works best for your environment.
This article is not about comparing Exchange 5.5 to Postpath though, it's about how a hospital saved a bunch of money.
Non starter
Google Business Apps != HIPAA compliance.
Well said Anon2
People outside the Health care industry tend to forget that the involvement of PHI means another layer of polices that must be answered.
Did the hospital check for HIPPA compliance ?
Exchange no longer relevant in any version
Microsoft can't ever improve any product without adding extra complexity, management overhead and cost. Show me any MS product where that's not true. Exchange 2007 with its dependency on an AD is a disaster waiting to happen.
Critical services like mail and databases should be simple and easy to support - this is what these guys have found. I applaud them.
Apples and Oranges?
As a matter of fact, you could be right in saying this is a comparison of apples to oranges.
But the emphasis in this article is on the pricing, and not feature sets.
Truly, if you compare Postpath licensing to that of present-day Exchange 2007, the difference would more than overwhelm you.
The hospital was looking at an Exchange-like mail server that understands their budgets, and they got it.
My 2 cents!
Why is so difficult to accept a real world scenario?
I don't understand the hostility. It's quite common for organisations of this kind to be overly "conservative" and hence letting their IT-infrastructure suffer. It's probably too common. OK, they might have lost functionality and money by procrastinate an inevitable decision, but what's done is done.
I can't see any comparison between software of the same generation in the article, and as far as I can understand it's not even an issue here. It's closer to: "Hey, this is the current situation, how to deal with it?" Hence it could very well be an option for other organisations being in the same situation. This is an example of a pragmatic approach, isn't it?
Of course you could choose the more expensive Microsoft route – everyone decides for himself – but if someone is looking for a similar solution with similar features, we at least have a study that shows:
- not that difficult a task to migrate to an alternative platform in such a scenario
- it works and integrates well with existing Windows solutions
- personell couldn't be lower whatever solution they would choose (from three to one,so it can't get lower)
it's stable and reliable over time
It looks pretty informative, doesn't it?
Post new comment