He said the larger implementations of GroupWise in Australia, such as Queensland Health with 40,000 users, and a University in Victoria with 4000 users and 85,000 NetMail -- the light-weight Web-based version, are all managed by a single administrator.

This view was echoed by end users at the conference.

"I used Exchange 5.5 as part of my MCSE and noted it is structurally more complex as well as being harder to maintain," said the GroupWise administrator at one university who wished to remain anonymous.

Bertnick's view on the topic was unashamedly slanted. His presentation was titled Defense Against Microsoft; Protecting your GroupWise and Novell investment.

From a security standpoint, he said comparisons to Exchange were important. Last year CERT reported four virus outbreaks against GroupWise; while 287 attacks were reported against Exchange.