I?m looking for creative suggestions and brainstorming to a political and technical hurdle our organization is facing. I have some technical background, but I am the project manager, so my direct technical involvement is somewhat minimal.
Our agency currently uses GroupWise 6.5 and we have 25 post offices for our various departments. Seven of these GW POs are located at remote facilities across the state. These facilities provide varying levels of medical care. They use GroupWise for a variety of critical functions including medical orders and staff scheduling. It can be (and has been) argued that an e-mail system shouldn?t be used for these types of functions, but unfortunately, this business model has become somewhat ingrained and, for the purposes and timeline of this project, is not negotiable.
We are migrating our e-mail system to a consolidated Exchange 2007 environment hosted by another agency. The agency maintaining the Exchange 2007 cluster does not like the idea of having to put remote Exchange servers and DCs at each of these 7 facilities because it defeats the purpose of a consolidated e-mail system located in a secure, redundant data center and because it introduces additional hardware and software costs.
Our agency maintains that this is a business need because the WAN links to these facilities have been somewhat unreliable in the past. We want Exchange servers and DCs at each of these sites so that, in the event of a fiber cut or other WAN failure, e-mail and scheduling functions will continue to operate within that facility (i.e. they?ll at least be able to communicate within that campus). Essentially, patient health could be compromised in the event of a network failure.
I?d like to be able to present some options that would satisfy both agencies? needs. The project manager for the ?other side? seems very willing to entertain compromises. Money is a factor, but the idea of mirrored servers is not out of the question. Indeed, that?s the only alternative my admittedly inexperienced mind has been able to come up with.
Thoughts? Wild, hare-brained suggestions? I?m open to anything.