Let’s be honest here. You are all pack-rats with your e-mail, aren’t you? If you are reading this you probably have an affinity for technology. And that being the case, you probably spend a good bit of time in e-mail. Let’s face it, e-mail is a wonderful tool to help communicate with a lot of people often and keep track of things in writing.

I just took a look at my work account and I sent roughly 3200 e-mails in 60 days. That’s an average of 53/54 e-mails every day (including weekends). And let me tell you, I don’t always write very short e-mails…

I typically receive anywhere between 80-120 e-mails every day, just in my work account mind you, and this generates a lot of work and communication.

In our environment we use [tag]Outlook[/tag] with an [tag]Exchange[/tag] back-end. This is very convenient for a lot of reasons and offers some wonderful collaboration tools. Everybody that’s anybody integrates with Exchange and/or Outlook.

Let me tell you though, from a network administrator’s position, Exchange can be a real bear. About 18 months ago we had to conduct an emergency migration to another exchange server. That was 28 hours of pure agony as we watched many 2 GB mailboxes move 1 item at a time. It took ALL night to move 70 e-mail boxes.

That’s when I started thinking about tools that would help me groom the exchange database, called the [tag]Information Store[/tag] (IS) and increase the ability to search e-mails as Outlook’s built in search feature is pretty weak.

I began scouring sources, and found a strong candidate - EMC’s [tag]e-mail Xtender[/tag]. I kept on searching, but there didn’t seem to be anything else in the market - at least not for the SMB. So I began the long process of working with a partner company, asking questions, viewing demos, and trying to ascertain if the solution would be a good fit.

The price tag started at $5000, and then quickly went to $10,000 after some discovery - and ended around $20,000 for what we were really trying to accomplish. I found that I had to fill out lengthy technical surveys and even have EMC approve the installation.

All of this for 68 mailboxes?

I began shaking my head… I needed something to make my life easier - not more complex. Exchange with Outlook and [tag]PST[/tag] files was bad enough, but the pain of that wasn’t enough to bring us to spend that amount of money and more importantly time… With more than 5 major projects going on already, and a slew of minor ones, I just couldn’t stomach a 2-3 month roll-out.

So for now, we will continue to be pack-rats and continue with the way we do business until something comes along that can knock my socks off. For now, as much as I hate to admit it, I am going back to the old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Tags: Business, Change, e-mail; Exchange, Outlook, PST, Technology