This year we want to upgrade the email server and decided to research staying with GW or migrating to Exchange. We decided to stay a couple of more years with GW 8 mostly because there are other expenses we are incurring as we are merging multiple sites, but if this has not been the case we will be migrating. Why? One license of Groupwise cost $86 while one license of Exchange cost $2 through non-profit channels. I hope that in a couple of years they bring the program back and we will be able to keep GW.

The last few years I’ve been the guy hired to migrate GW to Exchange. Some observations:

1. No ROI. Chances are the customer is gonna do the same things with Exch as they did with GW (email and calendar), and not utilize the full features of either one. When all is said and done, lots of money is spent, lots of human hours spent ($$) and lots of chaos happened, and everyone is doing the same thing, albeit with a different interface.

The only times a migration makes sense is if you have different platforms for the same company or government, etc., or have a specific application that demands one system (and no, Sharepoint is NOT such an app).

2. Neither system runs well w/o trained admin staff. Neither system runs well w/o trained users. In school systems, no one wants to go for training, and in most places, no one wants to pay for it. This is not fixed with a migration.

3. In all cases, you’re migrating from a neglected GW system to a new shiny Exch system. Well, in 10 years, guess what the new Exch system is gonna look like if they give it the same level of care?

4. Let’s face it — email can be easily outsourced to an offsite company. My bet is that the next round of email migrations will be to outsource the email, in the same way that companies outsource voice mail.