Microsoft today revealed Exchange 2010 and promised the product will become available in the second half of 2009. Microsoft also hinted that Office 2010 and related products will enter technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and become available in the first half of 2010.
Amongst the usual fanfare of lower costs for deployment and management options the company touted improved features in it's Outlook Web Access for Exchange mailboxes. Amongst the new features:
- MailTips. Warn users before they commit an e-mail faux pas such as sending mail to large distribution groups, to recipients who are out of the office or to recipients outside the organization, helping protect against information leaks and reduce unnecessary e-mail messages.
- Voice Mail Preview. See text previews of voice mail directly in Outlook.
- Ignore Conversation. This e-mail "mute button" allows people to remove themselves from an irrelevant e-mail string, reducing unwanted e-mail and runaway reply-all threads.
- Conversation View. Combine related e-mail messages in a single conversation to reduce inbox clutter.
- Call Answering Rules. Create customized "Press 1 for …" call-routing menus with Exchange voice mail.
- Consistent Experience. Use Outlook on the PC, a mobile phone or a browser for the same experience with enhancements in Outlook Mobile and Outlook Web Access.
Was meant for Office 2010, and not for Exchange 2010
Also, despite being pretty near the bottom of the importance list for server software, I really hate the new logo - the 2007 one had the cool "hooking things together" design going on, while this is pretty unidentifiable. Meh. :-/
Other new features include:
- Server based e-mail archiving.
- Legal and compliance retention policies.
- Information rights managements
- User self-service and the ability to manage distribution groups
- Delegated e-mail moderation.
They're the features that, in most cases, will bring the biggest business benefits and are therefore the ones I'm most excited about. They solve a lot of problems!
We plan to deploy Exchange 2010's new OWA, MOSS 2007 for extranet / intranet access to certin resources, and Password Reset PRO from SysOp Tools (www.sysoptools.com/password-reset-pro.aspx) to allow users to self-service password resets / changes and account unlocks via web (btw this is the ONLY product I've found that uses native AD and IIS, runs as a 64bit app on x64, and does not require schema changes or wierd external DB's- It is hot
With this combo we'll be able to give easy / secure resource access to our remote users, and we will not need to make any changes to AD other than ensuring the org structure is clean / set up properly.
Anyway, I'm new here and just wanted to chime in.
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