It's rather ironic how the MSU computer laboratories switched from their reliable, robust and secure grid Sun Solaris mail servers in exchange for a cheaper, low rent and clumsy Dell server. As Interim Director Tom Davis said, "Ironically, one of the goals of the mail.msu.edu project was to upgrade to current generation, server-class hardware with very high levels of performance and availability."

My question is, does Davis know MSU was running one of the most reliable server-class mail solutions on the market? The PILOT system is stored on an array of Sun Sparc Stations. Sun is well known in the computer industry for making some of the finest and most expensive hardware on the market.

So, what would make MSU switch? Quality? No, I'm afraid it's the something else - price.

I'm sure the meeting with Dell went like this: "I guarantee that we can provide you faster servers for a fraction of the cost of an upgrade that Sun would offer you