>Out of the respect for the level of expertise available here, I thought it might be a good idea to get some feedback from you prior to my "opening my mouth and inserting my foot". So any and all comment regarding the following would be highly appreciated. Here's the deal:
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I don't know anything about the Notes server... I assume the new release doesn't require the Notes client like the old release used to.

I really think you need to decided what you want or need the server to do. Also, MAPI, while still used alot is somewhat older technology. Seems like the popular choices these days are...

Exchange

SMTP/POP (Internet style)

IMAP (Defacto Standard)

Lotus may implement one of the above... but, my understanding is that SMTP/POP is basically a get and send... it only stores mail until it is retrieved, then the mail is downloaded to the client... so, if you access mail at work and home you only have access to the money that you downloaded in that location.

With IMAP and Exchange you actually maintain the mail and folders if you want on the server. The folders with Exchange can be mail/calendar/tasks/contacts... this allows you to share this info for groupware functions like meeting planners and workflow. IMAP may implment this too.

The advantage to the IMAP / Exchange scenerio of course also requires that you have alot of storage space on the mail server.

If it were my compnay, I would deploy a Linux IMAP server. (ONe comes free in the Red Hat distribution). The exchange server at my office has crashed several times. Also, I think with an IMAP server you may find more groupware aps written to support it, rather than exchange, which is MS propriatary. Of course, if you only use MS software/servers and use Outlook this is not a problem.

Let us know how it goes when you open the can of worms.

BOb