1. Exchange

Its a simple fact that Exchange is the king of corporate messaging and sadly it’s not without good reason. One of the main reasons that Exchange continues to dominate corporate desktops the world over isnt actually the server side technology as much as the client Outlook until someone can replace Outlook with a client that really works then Exchange will contineue to be king. Outlook as we all know is tightly inegrated within the Office family, this integration is something thats key to its sucsess. If you look at the only other credible (and I mean credible based on userbase – not technical ability) challenges to the Exchange/Outlook/Office combination that have gained any traction over the last decade or so they all have one thing in common they either intergrate very well with Microsoft Office or they have their own office suite. Lotus Notes is a prime example of this – at first it was tightly integrated with Lotus SmartSuite, and then later its abilitys to work with Office were the focus. Users today want things that work toghether seemlessly (just ask Apple). Open Office for docs, Evoloution for client side email and then your pick of MTA/MDA on the backend is not seemles.

Powerful yes – seemless no.

2. Active Directory

This is somewhere that people are actually making some good progress, sadly the company making the progress is the same one that turned a lot of their biggest shops off in the late 90′s with a string of failed promises – and that company ? Novell, they have worked wonders on really gluing together Windows, eDirectory, Zen Works and SLES. Their offering is technically as good as if not superior to Active Directory they just need to make their sales and marketing teams get the product into the hands of those that matter (You, Me and our Bosses). If Novell fail to lift their marketing efforts AD will remain the directory of choice for the small shops out there, and as mentioned below the small shops are the ones that matter.

3. Trickle up effect

I have found through all my time working in I.T that the vast majority of SysAdmins and even CIO’s got there by accident and are self taught creatures. This sadly has the effect that many many SysAdmins started out in companies with a single I.T staffer (them) meaning they had to learn on the job and that they could steer the I.T boat in any direction they pleased. Now lets face it we are on the whole a lazy bunch, and what do lazy people do best ? pick the easiest solution with the shallowest learning curve. This has lead to a massive number of companies that are running Windows Server not because its the best but because it was the quickest and easiest thing to deploy when staff numbers were low. There are a few factors at play here, the first being the mentality handed to staff by their management “Okay so who’s going to look after this after you get hit by a bus” (note your boss will always assume that you WILL get hit by a bus) I have been bitten by this and promised that if we deployed a strictly Linux back office that it would be fine as there are any number of companies who could look after this stuff for us, this was of course entirely true with the only problem being that the companies that were willing to look after a 25 user network running Linux servers were either run out of some guys bedroom or exceptionally expensive. The other key player in the reason to run the easiest an not the best is funnily enough cost, when you look at Windows SBS it will cost you $1,089 for the OS $1,540 for an additional 25 CAL’s and thats it (I’m assuming you have hardware ETC) now if you look at doing the same with a commercially supported Linux disrtro (remember businesses are not happy taking risks) then your looking at around $799 (per year) for SLES then we have to add on an exchange replacement so Zimbra which is $40 per user per year – so $1000 per year for our 25 User company, we should then add in a decent backup solution (i know that you can achieve very good backup using tar etc but we need something really simple) I always liked Arkiea for this so add another $800 (This is a one off cost) if you add them all up its $2,629 for Windows SBS and $2,599 for the Linux stack, so Linux is slightly cheaper – the gotcha and its a big gotcha is the annual licencing that Redhat/Novell/Zimbra throw on – over 3 years the Linux stack will cost a total of $6,197 while Windows SBS over 3 years will cost $2,629. Now I’m aware that the Windows SBS offering has no tech support from Microsoft past their initial 90 day phone support but you do get software updates for life and the others you would only get the updates for the first year if you don’t pay for the licenses. With the Linux vendors you also get tech support while your paying the annual fee which in Novells case is 12×5 4 hour response, but for the $3,568 you could buy plenty of Microsoft phone time.

Final thoughts

I’m aware that there are many technical reasons for why one server stack beats the pants of any other, but what I’m talking about here is business case stuff, and until the enterprise Linux vendors realize that they wont take the market without some serious investment in end to end solutions and seamless integration then Windows will be running in our DC’s for a long time yet.