More Than Unified Messaging Coming to Exchange 2007 Users

Exchange 2007, the successor to Exchange 2003—Microsoft’s e-mail server software for organizations—and its Outlook 2007 client contain many new features that directly benefit end users. In addition to unified messaging (UM)—features that integrate e-mail, voice mail, and faxes—the new products will also give users better mobile access, spam blocking, and calendaring. Unlike UM, which will cost extra, the other new features come standard and should help win end-user support for upgrading from earlier versions of Exchange. However, rights to install Outlook will no longer be included as part of the Exchange client license.

This article does not cover new features in Outlook 2007 that are independent of Exchange 2007, such as RSS support for subscribing to blogs and other Web content; these were detailed in “Outlook 12 Adds Internet Hooks” on page 24 of the Jan. 2006 Update. Furthermore, Exchange 2007 also includes new capabilities that will primarily be of interest to IT departments, and new compliance features that help organizations meet business document-retention regulations. These features, plus an in-depth look at UM, will be covered in future Update articles.