merge disparate Exchange domains

[dpowell1]

Our company just bought a smaller company and management wants us to merge their Exchange (both of use Exchange 2003) world into ours. Specifically, they want the smaller company to be able to send and receive email using their existing domain name but also receive emails sent to their "new" email addresses using our domain name. What is the easiset, most cost effective means of achieving this?

 

[Zelandakh]

exmerge their accounts to PST.
Use ExchangeLegacyDSN to allow them to reply to their colleagues on the new system (read up on it, it is fairly easy to do).
exmerge their PSTs into your Exchange server.
Create 2 recipient policies: 1 for yourself with something like "where company = main company" and another where company = purchased company.

Your policy is @yourdomain.com and policy number 2 is @yourdomain.com and also @their_originaldomain.com which is set to primary.

Then on your bridgehead you set up a receive connector to allow inbound email for their_originaldomain.com and point the public SMTP at that.

Those are the realistic steps which will need to be done. If you have >2GB mailboxes then there are other things you can do. Don't forget public folders too.

 

[dpowell1]

If we want to leave their Exchange server and domain intact but give their users access to the email they will receive on their new email addresses from our existing Exchange is their an easier way to provide just that functionality?

 

[Zelandakh]

If they are staying in separate buildings, create contacts in your domain for each user then create AD accounts in your domain with your email domain and have them forward email to the contacts.

That will give you the functionality you require but is not efficient and doesn't consolidate which was my assumption.