Updated: July 9, 2020 (February 7, 2005)

  Analyst Report

Unified Messaging on Exchange Roadmap

My Atlas / Analyst Reports

2,533 wordsTime to read: 13 min

Exchange Server is an increasingly important contributor to Microsoft’s revenues with yearly sales now in excess of US$1 billion, but the company’s plans for the product were hazy until now. The recently unveiled Exchange roadmap includes an interim service pack, followed by a new release in 2006, code-named Exchange 12, that will focus on unified messaging, new APIs, higher availability, and new management interfaces. However, Microsoft is abandoning plans for a separate Edge Server version announced in 2004, and will stick with current mailbox storage technology rather than adopt a new SQL-Server-based engine (part of an abandoned Exchange project called Kodiak).

Although Outlook will also get a new update at the same time as Exchange, the Office team has not yet announced its plans for the product.

(For a graphical view of the Exchange and Outlook roadmap timeline, see the chart “Exchange and Outlook Overview“.)

Service Pack 2, Tools in 2005

No major releases are planned for Exchange in 2005. However, a number of new features will be delivered in 2005 as part of Exchange Server 2003 SP2:

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