I spent the morning today with a large financial services company and the topic of Daylight Savings Time updates required for Exchange 2003 and Outlook came up.

According to this company, quite a few organizations in the financial services vertical have decided to "tough it out" and will not be applying the recommended Microsoft updates to Outlook and Exchange to address DST issues. This is based partially on their attendance at industry-wide calls to discuss the issues, and partially based on their own experiences.

Reasons cited for not updating the toolset:

1. Application of the toolset causing issues with organizations, combined with evaluation of the possible exposure to end users
2. Number of releases of Microsoft tools over the past several weeks causing concern as to stability of toolset
3. Timeliness of industry updates causing downstream ISVs to not be able to deliver updates in time (eg. RIM Blackberry, Good technology)
4. Complexity and time to apply all of the updates required
5. Possibility that the government may choose to reverse the changes again either 1 or 3 years out

As a result, some companies are choosing not to apply the updates, including at this point at least one of the companies that we serve at Azaleos.

Instead, these organizations are informing their end user communities that they should expect to possibly have one hour time differences in their schedule over the several weeks and to manage their own calendars appropriately.

Based on Microsoft guidance, Azaleos is continuing to advise our customers to apply the recommended updates, and in many cases updating their systems on behalf and with the permission of their IT staff.