Re: [MLUG] mlug?

["Bruce Alspaugh" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

I agree with Shannon on this.  These observations about the migration to
Exchange are consistent with what I remember.  At the time, many departments
(mine included) were maintaining their own email systems, or using Lotus :cc
mail which had a lot of problems.  Since I was maintaining an email system
that actually worked for my department, I was quite opposed to the migration
but it did little good.

So how was that decision reached?  My understanding is what actually
happened was that University Hall wanted a unified email directory so they
could send email announcements (read spam in way too many cases) to
university faculty, staff and employees.  The Showme people finder was not
always up-to-date.  So Ralph Caruso (who I understand was a former IBM
employee) recommended to Pacheco that we migrate to Exchange.  Based on the
widespread dissatisfaction with Lotus :cc mail, I don't belive he would have
considered Lotus Notes or any other Lotus product.  Pacheco, relying on
Caruso's recommendation, then sent out a memo requiring the switch to MS
Exchange and the decision was made.  Ed Mahon was hired about the time the
decision was made, and he was given the mandate to implement it.  Whether he
agreed with the decision or not was immaterial.

Many people pointed out (myself included) that a unified email directory did
not require consolidation to a single email system.  To me, all a unified
directory did was make it easier to send mass unsolicited email (eg spam).
Consolidating to a central system creates a single point of failure as
opposed to a distributed system.  Scalability was also a huge issue.  At the
time I think Mizzou was one of the largest (if not the largest) educational
institution to standardize on Exchange.  I think Boeing was the largest
corporation at the time.  The scalability had not been throughly tested.
Microsoft issued service packs and hot fixes to address memory leaks and
other issues that were discovered at Mizzou.  But of course, appeals to
logic were futile after the unfunded migration mandate was forced upon the
departments.

I understand Oracle makes a Unix based email system that is compatible with
Exchange.  (http://www.oracle.com/features/ocs/index.html?t1cs_email.html)
Could that be the system you are thinking of?

Bruce
IS Coordinator
Missouri Care Health Plan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Spurling, Shannon" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>
To: <EMAIL:PROTECTED>
Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2002 10:00 PM
Subject: RE: [MLUG] mlug?


> Actualy, the migration to Exchange wasn't exactly driven by staff
either.... Several evaluations of the exchange platform pointed out problems
and several reasons not to standardized on that platform, but they were
ignored. It was touted as the most complete intergrated communication
solution. Remember, very few university wide decisions are actualy made by
or on behalf of actual staff. Now I saw a more reliable and extendable
server solution that is exchange compatable, and I can't remember where I
saw it or who sold it. I runs under windows or unix, and has Mac, Unix, and
Windows clients available for it. It's not free software, but the liscensing
costs a lot less than Microsoft. Even if something like that were given as
an alternative, I doubt it could be accepted. Microsoft has somehow gotten
it's claws into the University, and I doubt they would let it happen.
>
> Shannon
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: King, Jonathan W.
> Sent: Sun 12/8/2002 6:46 PM
> To: EMAIL:PROTECTED
> Cc: King, Jonathan W.
> Subject: Re: [MLUG] mlug?
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, John Borchardt wrote:
>
> > hey, what the heck is going on with mlug?  the website hasn't been
> > updated for like a year, and there isn't even any
> > freesoftware.missouri.edu anymore.  does mlug even have a president?
> > does he or she do anything?  when was the last
> > meeting/presenation/expo/installfest?
>
> Dunno on all counts.  Before the school year I and a couple of other
> people volunteered to give presentations, but nobody ever got around to
> setting anything up...as far as I know.
>
> [snip]
>
> > so what?  is it okay for mlug to ostensibly do nothing while the rest of
> > the campus migrates to exchange server, outlook webmail, and winxp?
>
> I doubt that migration to Exchange is anything that MLUG could have
> influenced given that there was some fairly vocal opposition expressed at
> the time by some departments and faculty...who in practice do have at
> least a bit more influence than your average sporadic undergraduate
> organization.  I think a lot of the complete universality of MS owes a lot
> to the fact that it (and its file formats) were adopted as being official
> by the staff, which means that everybody else had to come along for the
> ride, at least if you wanted to send any electronic documents to them.
>
> Actually, in my classes I forbade electronic submission of papers and such
> for the opposite (but identical in spirit) reason: I didn't want to deal
> with a bunch of dorkily formatted Word (random version here) files.  This
> year, I do accept these from (smaller) upper division classes since I can
> easily convert them into PDF.  Not the best end result, but I can live
> with it.
>
> jking
>
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