Out with the old & in with the new...

[irsprint84]

Yeah I would go with the external exchange, saves a server! If you are going to do in-house wait for Exchange 2010 SP2 should be out within a month

[pete]

Citrix XenServer has paid support, and has a better free featureset than VMWare.

You should be considering Live@Edu / Google Apps if you don't have any inhouse exchange, especially if your focus is "doing stuff offsite/at home".

[localzuk]

Staff currently just remote in to a Terminal Services / Remote Desktop Services machine? You could look to upgrading your remote login server to use RemoteFX, with a dedicated graphics card for graphics acceleration if graphics processing speed is what you're having issues with.

RemoteFX is only supported in LAN mode at the moment, according to Microsoft. They recommend 10Mbps per user... (Although, various tests run by sites come in at around 2-3Mbps per user normally).

This, compared to RDP which runs at what? 30-100kbps?

[Mark182]

Sounds like you have a good base to build on, do you have a solid backbone, core and managed edge switches?

An OS refresh, building in support for BYOD with a good quality firewall \ UTM and VMWare servers would be a nice step forwards and should give you the flexibility to keep moving forwards.

Btw is Exchange for students? If so avoid the aggro and offload to Live@Edu \ Google Apps. If for staff I'd say keep it locally.

No, It's just for staff.

Zen is something I like the look of plus it’s cheaper than VMware. I need to split our SCCM and Printer/flie server up as it’s not working very well at the moment.

Personally I'd say ditch the macs idea, it's not worth it for the cost over benefit

Sounds like you're in a good position to move on pushing windows 7 out considering you already have vista and SCCM in place. No mention of virtualisation for your servers? Get some VMware in there! - assume you're getting/thinking of new servers?

I'd recommend home access plus instead of paying for something like xenapp to use sims + apps from home, though i can only go on recommending this through experience of HAP and not on any experience of xenapp so i'm unsure if xenapp would allow further benefits that are worth paying for.

Virtualisation is a route I definitely want to go down as I want to with software as well.

[cpjitservices]

Xen is definately cheaper - it will cost you the price of A server as Xen is completely free.