• Chart: Exchange 2000 Pricing

After years of development and extensive beta testing, Exchange 2000, code-named Platinum, is available. A major upgrade of Exchange 5.5, Exchange 2000 has much greater scalability, reliability, performance, flexibility, and standards compliance than its predecessor. However, before an organization can implement Exchange 2000, it must move to Windows 2000’s Active Directory—Exchange no longer includes its own directory. Organizations will also have to decide whether the "Server" or "Enterprise Server" edition best meets their needs, and whether they will be implementing the all-new Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server. Depending on the number of servers and users, customers may find Exchange 2000 to be more or less expensive than the previous version.

Most of the details on Exchange 2000’s architecture and features have been covered in previous Update articles, as listed in the "Resources" section below. This article is limited to clarifying Exchange 2000’s packaging and pricing options.

Exchange Server or Exchange Enterprise Server?

Like its predecessor Exchange 5.5, Exchange 2000 will come in two flavors: Server or Enterprise Server. However, the features differentiating the two editions have changed.

Exchange 2000 Server

The standard version of Exchange 2000 should meet the e-mail and collaboration needs of the vast majority of organizations. It includes all of the core Exchange features and performs all of the functions that most organizations will want to employ. The only limitations are as follows:

• It is restricted to one 16GB mailbox database and one 16GB public folder database.
• It cannot take advantage of Windows 2000 Advanced Server or Datacenter Server clustering services.

Exchange 2000 Enterprise Server

Exchange 2000 Enterprise Server adds additional capabilities that will interest very large organizations and application service providers (ASPs) who need extra reliability, scalability, or connectivity. The main distinguishing features are as follows:

Additional reliability. Exchange 2000 Enterprise Server supports clustering using Windows 2000’s Cluster Services. It can run on two clustered nodes with Windows 2000 Advanced Server and on up to four clustered nodes with Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, and all nodes share the processing load.

Additional scalability. Exchange 2000 Enterprise can scale to very large databases, allowing server consolidation while partitioning the database so that data recovery is faster, should problems occur. Database size is limited only by performance and recoverability considerations, and databases exceeding 100GB are possible. Each server can have multiple mailbox and public folder databases, with up to four storage groups containing up to five databases each. If the storage groups are distributed over multiple servers or clusters, the maximum number of storage groups grows to 16. Exchange can even be implemented in a distributed configuration, with front-end protocol servers and back-end mail stores servers containing the databases. This helps distribute processing loads more efficiently in large, heavy-use scenarios.

Additional connectivity. Exchange 2000 Enterprise Server includes additional "connectors," not available on the standard product, that can integrate Exchange 2000 with IBM PROFS and Lotus Notes e-mail systems.

Additional functionality. Exchange 2000 Enterprise Server includes an IRC-compatible chat server that gives organizations an additional way to collaborate. This service is compatible with any IRC-compatible chat client, such as Microsoft Chat or PIRCH.

Pricing Model Unchanged, Higher Prices on Servers

Unlike some of Microsoft’s other 2000-series server products, Exchange 2000 has not switched to a "per-processor" pricing model. It retains the Exchange 5.5 pricing model, consisting of Client Access Licenses (CALs) for each "authenticated" user and separate server licenses for each installed Exchange server. The Exchange CAL is independent of the client software used to access the server, whether it is Outlook (Outlook 2000 is bundled with both server versions), Outlook Web Access, Outlook Express, or any other compatible client. A CAL gives a single user access to all Exchange 2000 services, including conferencing. CALs are not necessary for users who connect anonymously and do not require client authentication for activities such as reading news, chatting, or joining an unrestricted online conference.

As the accompanying chart shows, the cost of Exchange 2000 CALs is slightly lower than that of Exchange 5.5, but the cost of the server components is significantly higher. Because Exchange 2000 should be able to support many more users per server, Microsoft feels that the average cost per user will actually drop. However, smaller sites with fewer than 1,000 users on a server might not see this benefit.

Enterprise Agreement and Upgrade Advantage customers can freely upgrade their CALs and Exchange servers to the corresponding server versions, i.e., to upgrade to Exchange 2000 Enterprise Server, they must have a valid Exchange Server 5.5 Enterprise Edition license. ASPs offering Exchange 2000 services will fall under a separate licensing scheme and will be covered in a future Update article.

All versions of Exchange 2000 Server are available in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish localizations. Microsoft says that a Japanese version will be available soon.

Resources

For detailed feature and architectural information about Exchange 2000 Server and Enterprise Server, see the Mar. 2000 Directions on Microsoft Research Report "New Exchange 2000 Architecture Shaped by the Web" and the "Exchange 2000 Update" on page 8 of the Apr. 2000 Update.

For detailed feature and architectural information about the Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server, see "Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server to Enable Virtual Meetings" on page 6 of the Aug. 2000 Update.

The official Microsoft Exchange 2000 Web site is at www.microsoft.com/exchange/productinfo/Exchange2000.htm.