shared calendars in outlook are extreemly dependable, as are shared mailboxes and pubilc folders.
I would say that excahnge, (from a user point of view) is one of the easiest servers to use, especially when coupled with outlook.
also from a server admin point of view, exchange is easy to set up and administer, (I assume there is a proper domain setup and not just a workgroup?
exchange(2000/2003) must be setup within a domain (AD) environment.
to get the most benefit from exchange, outlook must be used.
there are no real 3rd party equivellants that work with exchnge servers.
although obviously IMAP and POP3 functions can stil be used with exchange, but the exchange services are the best for exchange servers...
the cost of the server, and the fact that it has to be run on a server OS, and the cost of the outlook licenses do make the Exchange route for shared calendars a very expensive route to go indeed.
In which case.
has your client looked at products like the oracle calendar? it's a seperate client that doesn't do email, but it is very powerful and comes with a website component to allow access to calendars over the web.
also there are a lot of very good web based calendars...
