Acknowledgments

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Clearly, I could not have brought all this information together without the help of many people. My colleagues at HP are a constant source of inspiration, not only with their ideas but also with the probing and questioning of the concepts we have about best practice for Windows and Exchange. Best practice evolves and does not remain static, because we have to base it on experience gained through deployment.

Among those I have to thank at HP are Stan Foster, Bert Quarfordt, Kathy Pollert, Pierre Bijaoui, Kevin Laahs, Kieran McCorry, Donald Liven- good, Daragh Morrissey, Veli-Matti Vanamo, and all the other members of the HP messaging community.

I also received a lot of support from Microsoft from folks such as Mohsen Al-Ghosein, Larry LeSeuer, Ken Ewert, Marc Olsen, Aaron Hartwell, Glen Anderson, David Lemson, and many others I have bothered with questions and from whom I have been grateful to receive responses.

A book does not come together without a lot of work behind the scenes. I am grateful for the support of Theron Shreve, the publishing editor at Digital Press, and Pam Chester, both of whom have helped me whenever I needed to get past a knot in the publication process. I also acknowledge the help I received from Alan Rose and his team at Multiscience Press Inc., who copyedited, generated proofs, indexed, and generally humored me as the book came together. I especially need to thank Lauralee Reinke who formatted the book and coped admirably with a continuous stream of changes.

Perfect enough

There comes a time when the writing has to cease, when there is no more information to discuss on your selected topics, when you simply cannot write another word, or when your publisher tells you that the book is now so large it would qualify as a weapon in some people's hands. "Perfect enough" is a term used to describe the HP-Compaq merger: Not everything worked; not everything was as good as it could be; but enough people, technology, and processes came together on time and in enough detail to allow two huge companies to merge. I think this book qualifies to be "perfect enough" and hope that you agree.

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