In-depth knowledge of the technologies. The company had the opportunity to work with John Rhoton, an author who had written extensively on Microsoft Exchange migration. The fact that the company had multinational coverage also played a role in to the decision since all of Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan were going to be involved in the implementation. Ongoing support and operations did not play a role in the selection process since Merrill Lynch does not require any kind of post implementation support. As part of the selection process, price played a minor role.
Travel is long and costly between the countries.
For other areas, such as our Tokyo office, rolling out 500 copies of NT at the desktop is simply a matter of walking from desk to desk until it's completed. But for other offices, the logistics were a nightmare. Expertise within the countries was limited and language barriers were huge. The project meant travel, hotel fees, communications difficulties, and making sure the right hardware and software were available when the installers arrived. The process was simply more complicated for us due to these logistics problems.