Death knell sounds for Exchange

The end of the extended support for Exchange 2003 drops the flag on a final race to the cloud, warns David McLeman

On 8 April next year Microsoft will end its extended support for the Exchange 2003 mail server. A fifth of businesses still run it, and will need to make a move or face the obvious security risks that come with out-of-date software.

End-user organisations will be faced with three options, broadly speaking. Firstly, upgrading their on-premise application to Exchange 2010. Secondly, they may use this forced move as a springboard for adopting cloud computing, and in most cases this is likely to be either Office 365 or Google Apps for Business.

With such a significant proportion of businesses being forced to make changes at this time, there is no doubt this could be a huge opportunity for the channel. A lot of organisations will need to upgrade, and for resellers of traditional, on-premise offerings this will be more or less business as usual.

However, for end users moving over to the latest version of Exchange it will be complicated and expensive, involving rather a lot of hardware as well as software updates.

For resellers that have already made the move or are looking to switch to cloud computing, the end of Exchange 2003 could present a massive opportunity.

Studies tend to suggest that many businesses already use cloud computing somewhere in their organisation, and the number is expected to grow. So most businesses are now not only accessing cloud services, but increasingly aware of the benefits in terms of IT efficiency and cost savings.

Although Exchange 2010 offers new features, easier administration, improved security and support for larger mailboxes compared with Exchange 2003, there is no single compelling financial or business benefit in staying with an on-premise implementation.

Whereas moving to cloud-based email and office applications offers a range of benefits that will certainly have a significant impact on the ability of businesses to innovate, collaborate and become more efficient.

This could be a tipping point for resellers thinking of breaking ties with Microsoft. The IT landscape has changed dramatically since Exchange 2003 was introduced to the market. The consumerisation of enterprise IT has proved difficult to ignore, with employees increasingly using their own phones, tablets or laptops to work while they are on the move.

I have read that the proportion of email opened on mobile devices reached 41 per cent in the second half of 2012 and is expected to surpass desktop email by the end of this year.

For many organisations, implementing device-independent IT is increasingly attractive, if not critical. So resellers that fail to take advantage of the cloud computing revolution will be missing out on huge opportunities, both now and in the future.

Business as usual for the enterprise IT channel is no longer enough. We have already seen a host of large, more traditional or box-shifting resellers that have failed to adapt to new situations fall by the wayside. For smaller resellers, this will also continue to happen, but with less fanfare.

Continuing with the status quo will not deliver the same opportunities, or the same margins, as the channel enjoyed in the past. If you see the cloud as a threat, that is all the more reason to change.

The information technology industry is undergoing the most radical overhaul since the emergence of client-server computing and the launch of the now-ubiquitous PC of the 1980s. Resellers need to adapt and align themselves with demand, or risk experiencing a wholesale loss of custom over the next 12 months from which they may never recover.

David McLeman is managing director of Ancoris