I Luv Exchange.

Over the years that I've been working with Exchange Server, one of the more common questions I get asked is "Why Exchange?"  With all the other messaging systems out there, it's a valid inquiry.  The short answer is, "I am a masochist."

Yes, that was a joke, please do not send any more of those really weird emails my way...

So why do I stand by Exchange Server year after year, even as yet another version releases without a SQL back-end, forces hardware upgrades and has a difficult migration path?  Because - at its heart - it does what I and my clients need it to do.

Exchange Server is a complex animal, but one that other vendors have not yet been able to completely match in terms of what it does.  There are tools that do messaging and shared calendars well - some might even say better.  There are collaboration tools that are superb!  There are even Unified Messaging platforms that rival the best efforts of the guys in Redmond.  There are not, however, many total packages that can do it all, and do it well enough that you can rely on them.

The combination of Exchange Server, Office Communication Server, SharePoint Server and Outlook (well, all of Office) creates a solution set that does everything that most businesses would require for messaging and collaboration.  Add in the new Groove systems and now you're moving well past what most Enterprise Messaging solutions can provide.

Yes, it is true that Exchange is challenging. It is also true that the Messaging and Collaboration Platform is complex and overwhelming for inexperienced users.  However, I challenge a novice to take Lotus or SendMail and get it working without either a little help or a lot of reading.

So, enough with the Exchange bashing!  Reach out to others in the community, search knowledge bases and web forums, and generally let others who have been in your shoes before help you.  In most cases you can find someone who has experienced the same problem you have, and who found a way to fix it.  And in any case you'll learn a lot more about how the platform works.

No, it's not perfect - not by a long shot - but Exchange is the best Messaging and Collaboration platform (with its eco-system software tools) that I have used in my time as a Systems Consultant and Engineer.  So yea, I do enjoy working with it, and there might even be some luv in there too.