Exchange 2000 Update

Microsoft released Exchange 2000 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) in late February and hinted at new pricing and packaging for the final version of the Exchange 2000 product line. One specific change is that features previously described as “real-time collaboration” will be released separately as Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server. This implies that some features that beta users have been testing may be part of a separate, more expensive release of Exchange 2000, rather than the Standard version. Conspicuous by its absence in the announcement of RC 1 was any mention of the “Tahoe” documentation server feature presented as part of Exchange 2000 at the TechEd conference in May 1999.

Exchange 2000 RC1 Released

The Feb. 28 release of Exchange 2000 RC1 indicates that Exchange 2000 is on track for general availability by early summer. RC1 follows an extensive Exchange 2000 Beta 3 corporate preview program that involved more than 400,000 seats. The RC1 announcement referred to three distinct products: Exchange 2000 Server, Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server, and Exchange 2000 Enterprise Server. It is the latter, the most advanced version, that is available for testing. Microsoft’s rationale is that the Enterprise version is a superset of the other two and contains all the features that might eventually be released as separate packages. Microsoft has stated explicitly that testers in the RC1 preview program will therefore see features during evaluation that will be absent in the final release of the Standard version of Exchange 2000.