Although I agree with all of your emotions because I share many of them, certain of your comments have me wondering how much time you have spent around big corporates.

Microsoft is to this day, beyond pervasive. I have over a decades worth of experience in data analysis, systems analysis, business intelligence and software design and I have never been in a big corporate office that does not use exchange, Outlook is de facto, period.

Clearly then all of those desktops are windows boxes.

With the release of MSBI as a competitor to all of the top flight BI suites that pretty much comes bundles with MSSQL... Watch this space - MS will be ubiquitous in BI within the next decade, I am an expert in the field and I have zero doubt about that.

The simple fact is that MS is still the 'safe' (define that as you will) choice for the dinosaurs that run corporate IT... The world you assert as real right now is a in my opinion a far future possible state, nothing more.

Companies using Microsoft SQL (and sometimes requiring the same from others, which is very odd) are often viewed as somewhat clueless. I think for business people, Microsoft has some positive aura (I don't really know why), but everyone else just tries to stay mostly away from them.

Personally, I wonder if enterprise BI will even exist in the next decade. I think corporate IT is on it's way out.

Of course it will - everyone needs to understand their data, how else do you think they make an informed decision? If anything this market is increasing in size, and the Microsoft suite does an excellent job of filling the mid size end of the market. Dont knock MSSQL till youve tried it because its pretty fucking awesome at the moment.

I use MSSQL every day. But that's because I'm currently working in IT for a very large company. I don't expect the job I do to exist for another 10 years so I think it's irrelevant what's popular here.

BI will, but the EDW will become less important. As long as businesses need data, there will be BI, or the same concept with a different name.

"and Exchange needs to die a quick death"

What do you propose as an alternative to the hundreds of thousands of mid-sized companies who use Exchange/Outlook now?

Google Apps my friend - even Mining companies of 2000+ staff are right now eveluating it and loving it. As for your BI statements you must have a short memory. In the last decade alone the strategy for MS BI changes every 3 years or so, products that partners have spent thousands on training etc have been cut without notice, acquisitions in the space have been squandered with very little IP making it into MS product. You must have picked the worst example to disprove the OPs argument. Open source based BI solutions have made serious progress over the last 4-5 years.

If you are seriously claiming that Exchange and Google Apps provide the same features except for the most basic, one-sentence description of those features (as in, 'they both send mail and store contacts'), you clearly don't have the slightest idea of what Exchange is or does.

Regarding the BI, I think you're mistaking me for another person in this thread, I don't know much about that, nor do I have an opinion. I'm just saying that Exchange is unique and there is nothing out there that can replace it without making very different trade-offs in the way your IT infrastructure is set up.

You have obviously never used Google Apps Premium edition. It does the bits that actually matter to users. I havent looked after Exchange since the 2007 version but am well aware what it can do.

Part of the "charm" of corporate IT is that what matters to the users isn't even part of the equation.

Do Google apps allow you to have your own server completely cut off from Google? (cos no way would the company I am in want to let google see their mail)

No you dont host the Google Apps product locally - thats the whole point of it.

Yeah, that's going to be a dealbreaker for a lot of businesses. Some of them actually take confidentiality of their own and clients' data somewhat seriously. And for good reasons, too. Besides, you're not just trusting Google with your internal communications and sensitive customer data, but it's also an American corporation that's been known to willingly share data with government agencies. If you're not based in the US yourself, why place such trust? To illustrate, imagine there's a service like "Yandex Apps" (maybe there even is, I don't know), of course some businesses would not care as long as the product is good, but you can also imagine there'd be many that would be rather hesitant to host their sensitive business data on a Russian webserver on a different continent... :)

Yes, Americas National Security Letters and lawful interception laws are sparking a lot of concern over this.

Zimbra. Zimbra+Thunderbird. GoogleApps.

Do you know how Exchange works, and how Zimbra works, from a user and management point of view? (I'm not even taking GoogleApps seriously, because many organizations don't want to outsource the storage of their private data).

If yes, how can you say that they are 'similar' except for the very most basic point that users can send email with them, much like both a Lamborghini Murcielago and a Ford Model T are both 'cars'?

If no, why do you suggest them?

I find the "organizations don't want to outsource the storage of their private data" an interesting one. Do they think they can secure their email servers better than Google can? Are they going to refuse to hand over data if requested by authorities? As far as I know Google doesnt do anything more than say a spam filtering service like MessageLabs would do - i.e. index some text to see if it should be classified as spam / malware etc. You can read their policies on this here http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6...

>Are they going to refuse to hand over data if requested by authorities?

At least they'll know the authorities are requesting the data...

I thought voting something down was for trolls, not because you disagree...

Is that directed at me? Look at my profile: I don't have the ability to down vote.

Do you know what the word "trusted" means in the context of security?

> Do they think they can secure their email servers better than Google can?

Just because someone secures their servers better than you can doesn't mean you automatically have to trust them with your data.

Let's assume for a moment that I have the safest vault in the world. According to your reasoning, the logical thing to do would be to put your valuables in my vault? Gosh ..

And even if you do trust Google with your sensitive data, do you also trust all their employees that might have access to it? http://gawker.com/5638874/david-barksdale-wasnt-googles-firs... And Google is a rather big corporation, if anything were to go wrong, they are notoriously hard to hold accountable.

> Are they going to refuse to hand over data if requested by authorities?

Well, they do not necessarily answer to the same authorities as Google does, so in some cases, yes, absolutely.

> Just because someone secures their servers better than you can doesn't mean you automatically have to trust them with your data. When coupled with credibility of course it does.

> Let's assume for a moment that I have the safest vault in the world. According to your reasoning, the logical thing to do would be to put your valuables in my vault? Gosh .. No it wouldnt, silly argument really. You have less than zero rep.

I know how Zimbra works, yes. And I think it is a bit harsh if you call Exchange a Model T - even though the search facilities through Outlook are crap, and many Exchange instances are configured with ridiculously little mail storage (eg. 250 MB/user).

If any comment ever deserved an "El Oh El" it's surely this one.

There aren't any enterprise alternatives even though there should be one.

For instance, if RIM had half a clue and a nickel for every bad idea they've executed on they'd have built a messaging platform to compete with Microsoft.

It's obviously too late for this now, but there aren't many companies that people would trust their email to.

I recently set up an email system for a small company using cPanel, hMailserver and Thunderbird. I actually looked at Zimbra but decided to go with a Windows-based solution. I also considered Google Apps, but was afraid it wouldn't allow for fine-grained control over access permissions (i.e. managers seeing subordinates' accounts and restricted shared folders) and also unrestricted creation email aliases/accounts.

Should I have taken a closer look at GA? Thunderbird isn't the easiest to use, but I like how it's easy to work with shared IMAP folders.

GoogleApps yes

But don't waste your time with Zimbra, really