Intellectual Ammunition

[Monty Harder]

Jeffrey A. McCright <jmccright2 at home.com> wrote:

>So, saying that MS Exchange is VERY Hardware intensive , requiring more
Mail
>servers to do the same job that HP Openmail, or Sendmail , etc. requires
>isn't enough to dissuade those who are making the decisions? Bet it will
>dissuade the bean counters, eh? I would be surprised if your IT people
don't

  That's not who I'm appealing to.  I have to get the IT people to see the
technical reasons why it's a bad idea.

  Here's what I have off the top of my head:

    1.  Exchange + Outlook (our standard email client) = Worm Meat.
Arbitrary code in attached files are executed without any user action
whatsoever.  A single worm that gets to one of our people will propagate to
their address book (mine looks like it has every one in the company as
individuals, not to mention overlapping lists)

   2.  Exchange requires MS clients to talk to it.  POP runs on anything,
including our own favorite OS (which runs at least some of our intranet
servers)

   3. Exchange requires MS OSes to run it on, with all of the security and
performance issues that implies.

   4. Exchange is a huge security hole.

   5.  I understand that we will be keeping our mail on the server - moving
mail to the local HD is a tedious process that won't be done IRL  That means
that every time I want to read a piece of mail, it will require bandwidth to
the server. And when our T-1 line to South Bend goes down, we won't be able
to look at "saved" mail at all.

  6.  Did I mention that Exchange is a horrible security risk?

  7.  We recommend to our customers that they purchase a Unix server for our
program - it seems as if we don't take our own advice.

  What I'm hoping for is to get them to agree to leave POP up in parallel
with Exchange indefinitely, and leave it to individual users' needs.  And
when (not if) a worm gets in and propagates at light speed among
Exchange-enabled Outlook clients, I can say "I told you so."  And recommend
moving the mail servers to NSA Linux boxen....