Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing of Exchange Server 2003, the next edition of its messaging server. Customers can order a 120-day evaluation kit and sign up for an Outlook Web Access demonstration account at https://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/trial/. According to a recent study by IDC, Microsoft Exchange led the Integrated Collaborative Environment market with 12.2 percent revenue growth worldwide over the previous year.
Exchange 2003, the most reliable and secure version of Exchange to date, has been developed with the experience of both information workers and IT administrators in mind, ensuring superior end-to-end quality for customers. Because of its improvements in productivity, manageability and security, customers are getting a significant increase in value with Exchange 2003 that could lead to important total cost of ownership (TCO) savings; pricing for the new messaging server will remain the same as for Exchange 2000. In addition, licensing options have been expanded to recognize the emerging needs of customers to provide cost-effective e-mail and calendar services for a broader set of users within their organization.