On October 13, 2020, Exchange Server 2010 will reach end of support. If you haven't already begun your migration from Exchange 2010 now's the time to start your planning. After investigating and analyzing the deployment state of an extensive number of Exchange customers Microsoft had decided to move the end of Extended Support for Exchange Server 2010 from January 14th 2020 to October 13th 2020.
What are the options?
According to the article the recommended option is to migrate your mailboxes to Office 365 and upgrade your servers by October 13, 2020, use Exchange 2010 to connect to Office 365 and migrate mailboxes. Next, migrate Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2016 and decommission any remaining Exchange 2010 servers. This sounds like a whole lot of work and a lot of mishaps can occur. This also explains why "an extensive number of Exchange customers" have not migrated yet.
Why not think out of the box and implement Zimbra Network Edition, keeping the same functionality at a lower total cost of ownership. The Zimbra upgrade and migration paths have always been straightforward.
No you are not the first to migrate from exchange to Zimbra
Thinking out of the box can ben challenging, you think you are taking a path into the unknown, but rest assured, you are not the first, not alone and not the last.
- Replace Microsoft Exchange 2003 & MDeamon email with a platform that provides better sync, backup and mobile access for Sogexfo.
- Replace Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino with a better, lower cost email platform for ArsBlue.
- Replace obsolete Exchange 2003 with a modern, web-based email solution for the Mairie du Mans a government office for the Le Mans region of France.
- Replace Microsoft to reduce operating costs, improve the safety and security of the email platform and integrate with other open source applications for Höhn companies.
Lower total cost of ownership
Some of the companies above claim to almost spent 60% more if they had continued with Exchange. Moving to Zimbra, they rapidly repaid the investment, and they now have only mailbox licenses and low maintenance fees. This is no surprise since Zimbra pricing is lower then Exchange. In combination with a free operating system like Ubuntu server Zimbra is the best of both worlds. You keep the same functionality including support at a lower price.
Easier to manage and use
System administrators also report more simplified, easier email management with Zimbra. With backup, AV/AS and archiving built into Zimbra, mail administrators no longer have to manage these systems separately. The users are also very happy with the Zimbra email experience. The Zimbra Web Client provides the same interface for everyone. For employees who still need to use Microsoft Outlook, they can use Zimbra Connector for Outlook to see all of their email in one place.
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