We recently conducted a large survey of organizations on behalf of PostPath, asking messaging decision-makers about their concerns on a number of issues related to messaging migration, etc. Here’s some of what we found:

* Most decision makers are concerned about various issues related to the migration to Microsoft Exchange 2007, including the complexity of the migration effort, the amount of time it will take, the cost of the migration and the need to upgrade hardware.

* Many organizations are still running Exchange 5.5 servers, although these servers support only a small percentage of total Exchange users.

* Most decision-makers anticipate that their migration will take anywhere from three to 12 months.

There are a number of conclusions that we drew from the results we obtained, coupled with data that we have discovered from other studies. First, many organizations are looking for an alternative to Exchange 2003 and earlier versions, one that will support a greater number of users per server, that will allow systems to be managed with fewer IT staffers and one that has lower licensing fees.

Paramount in the minds of most decision-makers, however, is that users must still be allowed to use Outlook, since Outlook works quite well for most users and replacing it would be expensive and difficult. There are a number of good alternatives to the Exchange Server that will allow the use of existing 32-bit hardware and that have lower licensing fees, and that allow Outlook to be used, thereby minimizing the impact on end users. We anticipate that millions of seats will migrate to an Exchange alternative over the next few years.

Another important conclusion, however, is that most Exchange-enabled organizations (as well as organizations that are not currently using Exchange) will migrate to Exchange 2007 at some point – the survey found that only 16% of organizations surveyed would not migrate to Exchange. Exchange 2007 provides a number of important benefits, including larger mailboxes; support for many more users per server and lots of other important enhancements. Yes, more expensive 64-bit hardware is required and migration will not be trivial, but most Exchange-enabled organizations will remain with Exchange because of the many benefits of doing so.

Michael Osterman is principal analyst of Osterman Research.