Exchange 2003 Boosts Performance, Eases Administration

Incremental improvements to the Exchange e-mail and collaboration server enable it to capitalize on new functionality and enhanced performance in Windows Server 2003. Exchange 2003 also has new features that are not dependent on Windows 2003, although most of these features won’t be apparent to end users. The new features could particularly benefit large corporate customers and application service providers (ASPs) by improving scalability, availability, and manageability, but they will lose some previous Exchange features, such as instant messaging, if they migrate. (See the sidebar “Limitations and Removed Features“.)

Even if they do not find the new features compelling, organizations that want to host Exchange on Windows Server 2003 must first upgrade to Exchange 2003. When considering whether to upgrade, organizations should note that these incremental improvements augment other new Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003 features targeted at mobile users. (For details on these new features, see “Improved Support for Mobile Exchange Users” on page 11 of the Mar. 2003 Update.)