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I guess my favorite part of the PostPath whitepaper was the substantial costs section. Debunking a couple of the easier ones immediately let's focus on the fun stuff.

• Public Folder support in OWA - is is supported and accessible. End of discussion really.
• 64bit computing - I'd be hard-pressed to find an organization of 2000 users installing a new messaging system which didn't purchase some new hardware to run it on in most instances. Especially when they are implementing h/w redundancy. (Cost comparison - still coming to it)
• Retraining your administrators to use a new administration interface - That would be much along the lines of having them retrain to use a new messaging systems administrative interface right? Like the PostPath admin interface for example.

Licensing Costs

Aaaaaah this old gem crops up again. Microsoft has actually not increased the cost of any Client Access License for Exchange since Exchange 2000 - yes that is right, 8 years ago they hiked up the price, how dare they! On the server side they also left the list pricing the same as it was for the previous version. 

What Microsoft did introduce was the Exchange Enterprise CAL with Exchange 2007, this CAL is additive (meaning you buy the Standard then the enterprise CAL) however along with the introduction of this new CAL came the right for a user to access:

• Unified Messaging - the Exchange Voicemail and Inbound Fax solution.
• Journaling
• Compliance
• Antispam and Antivirus services from the Exchange Hosted Services team.

Migration Costs

I'll lump all of this under one banner for ease of reading.

Intermediate Upgrade costs incorrectly states that you can only transition from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 without performing an intermediate upgrade, actually you are able to do this from Exchange 2000 as well with no issues. If you however try to transition direct from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2007 you will require an intermediate migration or in many cases the most appropriate option would be to purchase a tool from Quest which allows you to forego the cost of the step migration.

One thing I didn't see mentioned was the cost of migrating the existing user data in the older exchange system to the PostPath system. Or is the mail simply left in the old system or deleted/archived? Either way we still have a cost to be addressed there - as with an Exchange upgrade.

Another interesting point made was that PostPath doesn't change the popular Public Folder architecture, a little more research needs to be done here - are the public folders migrated into PostPath? Or do they remain in exchange and therefore accessible to PostPath users? Either way I see the requirement for dual CAL licensing - either maintaining CAL's for those users who are PostPath based using Outlook for postpath access and/or Exchange public folders on the exchange system. Or for Exchange based users who need public folder access to the PostPath system (assuming the data is stored there). Not sure where the reduction in licensing costs will come from then.

Cost Comparison

This table is taken from the PostPath site which highlights the cost of PostPath vs. Exchange Server in a 2,000 user environment with high-availability requirements.

Original PostPath Cost Comparison

Some base assumptions were made which are summarised in the bullet points below:

• Exchange struggles with a 2TB store and 2,000 users, so the configurator has selected 2 servers at the regional office, and 2 backup servers at HQ, whereas PostPath works fine with one server in each place
• On the storage side, the PostPath Server™ is able to use much lower cost storage - $1300 per TB for PostPath vs. $9700 per TB for Exchange
• In the case of Exchange, there are Windows Server and Windows CALs to pay for.
• For Exchange CALs vs. PostPath CALs, PostPath is lower cost, and benefits from free CALs for the redundant server

replication PostPath uses DRBD, which is an open source distributed storage system, whereas Exchange™ is using XOSoft to replicate.

Adjusted Cost comparison with some research applied to it

After having looked closely at the base assumptions, the numbers specified and the content of the PostPath website and also the whitepaper I was forwarded I've created a number of base assumptions myself. These are either from Microsoft, professional experience or other industry sites.

• Exchange Server 2007 is fine with 2TB of mailboxes on a single server, providing high availability for the environment let's place 2000 users on single server bringing a total of two mailbox servers each with the required roles.
• I/O enhancements in Exchange Server 2007 allow for use of lower cost storage comparable to the storage used by PostPath.
• Windows 2003 R2 Std Edition is used, not Enterprise Edition.
• Exchange Server 2007 Std Edition is used, not Enterprise Edition
• SCC used removing the requirement for Xosoft.
• Web Access server doesn't host mailboxes and therefore can use same hardware as PostPath.
• Customer already running Exchange for 2000 users therefore owns the CAL's required for Server OS.

In Summary

Overall I think there is a place and a potential market for products such as PostPath even in enterprises today, product innovation is coming from a number of areas and corporate messaging systems should be no different.

In any case from my simple re-calculation of their cost comparison above it quickly becomes clear that the 70% reduction in costs associated with going from one messaging platform to another from their website can also quickly disappear when challenged from the opposite perspective.

All of the pricing I used in my calculations were Microsoft's list prices for their products, I cannot comment for PostPath as their prices are not published however in an organization of 2000 users I would expect the licensing from Microsoft would be discounted and the delta between the two platforms would be less than it is in my comparison.

Admittedly it was possible to further reduce the cost of the Microsoft based comparison but I think the point has been made in the $420,000 difference between the original and the challenged comparison.

Guess I'll go back to picking on Domino now.