First Exchange 2000 Service Packs Ship

The first service packs for Exchange 2000 Server and Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server are now available and merit special attention by Exchange organizations. Both contain numerous new features in addition to bug fixes and will particularly benefit Exchange 2000 customers currently using Outlook Web Access (which provides access to Exchange Server via a standard browser), organizations interested in further reducing the possibility of e-mail-based viruses, and large organizations wanting to consolidate Exchange onto a small number of powerful Windows 2000 Datacenter servers. Exchange 5.5 shops may now be more willing to upgrade because of the service pack’s bug fixes and improved migration tools. Most significantly, Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack (SP) 1 ships with the new Outlook 2002 and the Outlook:mac 2001 clients, which were not available when Exchange 2000 first shipped.

The addition of new features contrasts with Microsoft’s recent attempts to limit its operating system service packs to bug fixes only. Even though these features could conceivably introduce new bugs, Microsoft still recommends the service packs for all Exchange 2000-based installations.