Building commerical IT architectures is not something that can be done in a forum. Your question "can you beat this or that" is impossible to answer because companies have so many resource factor that effect the architecture.
For example, two companies with the same basic mission, size, etc. may have different expertise or an invested training program with a strategic partner. In the same way, IT services are not purely technical, but a combination of technical requirements, business needs, existing resources, strategic partners, vendor relationship, local support based on geography. The list goes on forever.
To anwer a generic question about architecture without a complete architectural understanding of the organization is just a guess and could lead you down the wrong path because of unique constraints, requirements ......
Converting NT fileservers to samba may be a great idea; but when you leave the company, if they hire an NT expert, then the process may be repeated
and the samba server will be moved to NT.