Exchange 2007 a Boon to IT

In addition to new features aimed at end users, Exchange 2007, the new version of Microsoft’s e-mail server software, 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 will be available in a 64-bit version only, an upgrade from Exchange 2003 is not nearly as simple as was the upgrade from Exchange 2000 to 2003.

This article does not cover new features in Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007 pertaining to end users; these are detailed in “Outlook 12 Adds Internet Hooks” on page 24 of the Jan. 2006 Update, and “More Than Unified Messaging Coming to Exchange 2007 Users” on page 3 of the Dec. 2006 Update. New Exchange 2007 compliance features that help organizations meet business document-retention regulations are covered in “Exchange 2007 Assists Regulatory Compliance“. Future Update articles will cover Exchange 2007’s unified messaging and voice access features, as well as its new developer APIs.