Driving Down Costs and Lessening IT Workloads

In addition to new features aimed at end users, Exchange 2007 offers IT professionals a slew of important new capabilities—increased security, scalability, availability, and manageability—that should drive down costs while lessening IT workloads. However, these features are most useful for larger organizations that need multiple Exchange servers; benefits to small customers are more modest. Furthermore, since Exchange 2007 is available in a 64-bit version only, an upgrade from Exchange 2003 is not nearly as simple as the upgrade from Exchange 2000 to 2003.

Significant Architectural Changes

Several years ago, Microsoft abandoned a project code-named Kodiak, which utilized a SQL Server-based database for Exchange mailbox storage. However, Exchange 2007 contains major architectural changes that accomplish much of what the Kodiak project promised, such as a 64-bit database, data replication (using log shipping), and a better programmatic interface. In addition, Exchange 2007 includes a new role-based architecture and an improved security model.