Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer.
If you want to know how to defend against Exchange, you gotta keep your resources up to date. So here’s a list of some usefull stuff.
YOUR FRIENDS :
Consultants Corner: Special Edition – Exchange 2007 Facts (Update). Great Cool Solutions article by Gregg Hinchman.
What GroupWise Has that Outlook Doesn’t …. GREAT article that lists side by side the features that Groupwise HAS that Exchange/Outlook DOESN’T, by Lori Quinn.
GroupWise 7 migration to Exchange 2007 – notes from the failed migration. Cool Solutions article by a top NGW List poster, whose company VP pulled the plug on a migration project.
10 Reasons why GroupWise is the Best – PDF. Presentation by John Ellis, from the EMEA Summit archives.
Reasons for Keeping Novell Products (Also Known As: More With Less). A previous article by John Ellis, for reference (2004).
Defense Against Microsoft – GWAVACon 2008 – PDF. Presentation by Taylor Cochrane, from the GWAVACon archives.
Competitive Brief – PDF. Latest document by Novell, describing all things pro GroupWise versus competitors.
Novell GroupWise vs. Microsoft Exchange Competitive Guide. Guide from Novell, that no GW admin wants to refer to (GW 6.5 / 2004). For reference only.
YOUR ENEMIES :
GroupWise architecture for M$ techies :
(Part 1): Domain and Post Office Architecture
(Part 2): Message Flow and Glossary
(Part 3): API Gateway
Migration docs for M$ techies :
GroupWise to Exchange 2007 – Interoperability and Migration. The guide from a M$ admin’s point of view. Gives you a start to see the complexity of a migration project.
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Interoperability and Migration Guide. Ditto document for Exchange 2003.
Other documents :
Exchange support for Novell GroupWise version 6.x and 7.x. M$ KB doc, that says that GW 7.x is not supported.
If you need more, post a reply.
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Your “Defense against Microsoft” link is pretty old stuff. (Suprising to see it was presented at GWAVACon 2008) Most of the technical details against Exchange have been addressed in Exchange 2007. I’m not pushing Exchange, but if you go into a technical briefing against Exchange armed with the information in that slide deck, you’re going to get blown out of the water. For example, we’re running 4K users per server (not 435), our databases are limited to 100GB (not 32GB) for backup reasons (12 databases per server), we support 15,000 mailboxes with 2 full time engineers. . . And we migrated from GW 8 weeks ago with virtually no adverse affects.
I’ll be happy to answer additional questions if you want. I’ve done GW and I’ve done Exchange. Just happens that I’m now in a shop that does Exchange.
Rodney Bliss
Messaging Team Manager
LDS Church
We’re currently in a migration from Groupwise 7 to Exchange 2007. The first thing I recommend is to realize that it’s harder than it seems. Secondly, hire people who do this for a living as it will save you $$$ in the long run (Avanade for us). Thirdly, get a good IDM (Identity Management), Novell is a good one to use, but anything will save you time and money.
The quickest way to “fail” is to try and re-invent the wheel, so just do plenty of research and follow what has worked with others. Also, be prepared to work outside the box.