Thanks for the clarification. Some good information there, but still not as coherent as I'd like.
Excellent points about the security policy. Other than Activesync also possible to use with open source software, I can't think of any equivalent ability for the other features you mention.
I'm confused as to why you think OSS doesn't have adequate vertical scaling. Add more RAM, you can run more simultaneous connections. Add more/faster disks, you can fetch mail more quickly. Add more CPU, and, well, it's just as responsive. Mail servers aren't cpu bound, unless you have a fairly underpowered cpu.
Gosh, the old 2GB file size limit on 32 bit systems. Haven't seen that for a decade. Probably not a good example to use.
I quite like Maildir. I don't deal with hundreds of billions of emails, though. Just manage a mail server that stores email for 400-500 domains, with around 50,000 mailboxes, and 4 or 5 million emails. A one server job, really. Maildir works very nicely. It doesn't have an indexing system per se, but service software can implement that. Dovecot and Cyrus do just that. Works just as fast as the Exchange system we have here, which handles email for around 90 employees, although the Exchange system does suffer from the occasional Outlook connection timeout when it gets heavy with disk IO. I blame the sales people and their email searches.
Backups from Maildir aren't too bad. I get up to 80GB/hour. After hours, of course. Via Rsync, to a remote backup server. I do have directory indexing turned on for the filesystem. Necessary when dealing with so many files.
Maildir restores are far from impossible. Just copy the relevant restored mail files to the correct directory. Oh, and if running Cyrus, reconstruct the mailbox. Easy and convenient. Beats the hell out of having to splice the restored email into an mbox file. Haven't done that for years.