Author's Note: Before we begin, an important clarification. What follows is a horror story based on real events from my career. However, to protect the privacy of the people and companies involved, I have deliberately mixed things up: technologies, contexts, and specific details have been modified or merged with other experiences. I therefore invite you to read this story not as a strict chronicle of a single event, but as an archetype of a widespread problem in the IT world: vendor lock-in and predatory business practices. Any attempt to identify the specific company or software described would lead to an incorrect conclusion.
When the phone rang, I was in a meeting - so I didn’t answer. But I recognized the number and sent a quick message:
"I’m with a client right now. If it’s not urgent, please send me an email - otherwise I’ll call you ASAP".
The reply, via SMS, left me speechless:
"That’s exactly the problem. I can’t send you an email. Call me as soon as you can".
From that moment on, my perception of a certain kind of world changed forever.
A few years earlier, a major public institution - let’s call it Agency A - was still running an ancient Exchange mail server. It hadn’t received security updates for ages, the anti-spam was completely ineffective, and the new regulations were clear: embrace Open Source solutions whenever possible.
They had already received a proposal - expensive but, when compared to similar offers made to other organizations, apparently reasonable — for a managed service hosted by an external provider and based on an open source mail stack. The company offered a managed version with its own proprietary additions and enterprise support.
The catch? While such pricing had become almost "normal" in the market, it was still wildly inflated considering what was actually being delivered. Agency A already had solid infrastructure - reputable IP classes, redundant datacenters, everything running smoothly. We had built and maintained that environment for years, and it was still performing perfectly.
The request was simple: “Evaluate this solution, and if it’s suitable, we’ll migrate.”. About 500 active mailboxes, roughly the same number of aliases. Manageable, but far from trivial.
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