At EHLO, we love customer success stories about Exchange! How Exchange, Outlook and Office make users' lives better, improve productivity, and make work fun is what excites us. Today's post is the second in a series of customer testimonials we bring you to highlight what we're hearing about Exchange from our customers. In this post, David Aird shares his thoughts about why MITIE chose Exchange 2007.
I’m David Aird, Head of IT for MITIE, the strategic outsourcing company. When we were ready to replace our email system, we had several key considerations that we looked at. Like most companies we were looking for a solution that was competitively priced. While cost was important, we also had to be able to trust the solution we put in place would meet our business needs, work well with our existing technologies and wouldn’t require additional training for the 6000+ desktops we manage.
We looked at Google. They were competitively priced but with only three years in the productivity space, they lacked maturity and seemed like a risky investment. Usability was also problematic. Google Apps was missing some of the key features and functionality we needed. Although their price was attractive, it was clear that any short term savings we gained would likely be lost over the long haul and could cause a lot of headaches with an unfamiliar look and feel, training requirements and issues with not being well integrated with other products in our toolset.
We also thought about Microsoft Business Online Productivity Suite but decided the subscription model wasn’t right for us quite yet. Ultimately, we choose Exchange 2007 for its manageability, reliability and enterprise class support. Despite all the recent focus on the cloud, we’re not quite ready to move our data outside of our immediate control. When we do, we’ll do it on our terms rather than being forced into a fit that’s not right for our business. That may mean keeping some of our existing IT systems and moving others to the cloud. Ultimately, we believe Microsoft currently provide MITIE with the most flexibility and the best path forward for our business.
