Most companies just sign a contract and pay because they know they have to. You never hear about that, only dubious patents and patent violations are reported. For many companies patent fees are a good source of income (also because they put real research in it). That doesn't mean the patent system works well now.

Exchange is not magically more reliable than other systems. The way it's managed makes a great difference. My company introduced it early last year. The first half year was a nightmare. We still have at least one "outage" a month. I don't blame Exchange, but a server park that's overloaded and bad management. For me, my private Gmail is much more reliable then my company's Exchange.