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Our Company was recently aquired by a larger corporation and is 3000 miles away with little or no understanding of our situation here.

They are threatening to pull the plug on us and switch us to web mail. The problem with that is, we are in the boonies and we have a slow wireless connection.

Having the mail here on our local computers is serving us well. I had obtained a domain name and we are using the server from our wireless provider.

I do the small local IT here and my knowledge is limited at best. I'm not a corporate IT guy so I don't really understand their reasons.

Is there any kind of compelling argument to convince them to not cut us off? OR Is there a middle ground between what they want and what we want?

Thanks in advance.

Greycrow
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  • Are you looking for a business case suggestion for them not to cut you off (business-wise), or are you asking whether we think mail in the cloud is feasible for clients on a wireless network. If the latter is true (I hope), then please let us know what bandwidth options you have with your wireless carrier/ISP. – l0c0b0x Dec 14 '09 at 17:10
  • We have a 1mb connection at most but its intermittent and goes down alot and can be very slow at times. A single page request can take between 20 seconds and 5 minutes! – Greycrow Dec 14 '09 at 17:27

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Explain to them again two things: * What you have now works better than web-mail solutions; * You are a special case in that you have a special network config.

Could you perhaps get someone to drive out to you and eval your situation locally? If not, can you make a video showing the differences between reading mail locally and reading mail over the web? If it is really that much slower, it sounds like a show-and-tell is the answer.

Michael Graff
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Be aware, this is only the first step of the assimilation. I suggest cooperation .. you aren't going to win and it will end up being a distraction.

Is there any kind of compelling argument to convince them to not cut us off?

No. They want the advantages of centralized administration, a centralized directory. That you are unable to get a solid internet connection confirms the fear that your system is poorly managed.

You need to do make clear (in advance) what kind of performance you expect of the system as a whole. If they want to make the change, fine .. they are (in theory) the experts. If they make a change and the system breaks, make them fix it. Make connecticity Central IT's problem.

Note: in all likelihood the internet connection is going to need an upgrade. A subsidiary just plain needs more bandwidth than a stand-alone entity, because of the communication to HQ.

OR Is there a middle ground between what they want and what we want?

Depending on the mail system they use it should be possible for central IT to place a subsidiary mail server at your facility to serve your users.

tomjedrz
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