Selling points, or, how to sell Zimbra to your bosses.

["Goodyear, Duran" <DGoodyear@uarts.edu>]

The institution I work from (please ignore the domain name on my email ;)) is giving every new freshman student an Apple MBP with 2gb ram... and a slew of software.   ... but, we still run exchange (2003 currently).

The CTO has expressed concern that he doesn't have the budget now to make a major platform switch to something else, but then recently gave the green light to upgrade to exchange 2007, and seems to be ignoring the obvious platform compatibility issues that exist with a 90% apple campus running exchange... (only our administrative staff use PC's exclusively, and even some of those offices are shifting to apple slowly...)

I'm probably not going to get anywhere with this argument in the next 12 months... but anyway.

What are the major selling points that have worked for other internal sales efforts?
As we're a heavy Apple campus, the cross platform factor should be a no-brainer.

But what are the larger level technical issues that may not be apparent that could help with the discussion?
Hidden implementation problems?
Surprise savings?
Feature set?

What ever you've got, I'd love to hear it.

Thank you.

- duran