Exchange 2000 Released

After years of development and extensive beta testing, Exchange 2000, code-named Platinum, is available. A major upgrade of Exchange 5.5, Exchange 2000 has much greater scalability, reliability, performance, flexibility, and standards compliance than its predecessor. However, before an organization can implement Exchange 2000, it must move to Windows 2000’s Active Directory—Exchange no longer includes its own directory. Organizations will also have to decide whether the “Server” or “Enterprise Server” edition best meets their needs, and whether they will be implementing the all-new Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server. Depending on the number of servers and users, customers may find Exchange 2000 to be more or less expensive than the previous version.

Most of the details on Exchange 2000’s architecture and features have been covered in previous Update articles, as listed in the “Resources” section below. This article is limited to clarifying Exchange 2000’s packaging and pricing options.