As Exchange Grows Up, it Plays More Strategic Role
Long an important product for Microsoft, Exchange Server going forward will play even more of a key role in the company's plan to extend its collaboration applications to mobile devices and other software platforms.
Wed, August 19, 2009
IDG News Service — Long an important product for Microsoft, Exchange Server going forward will play even more of a key role in the company's plan to extend its collaboration applications to mobile devices and other software platforms.
Exchange Server 2010 will be released later this year, and Microsoft made a feature-complete release candidate of the messaging server available this week.
Exchange, which connects to the company's Office Outlook e-mail client on the front end, is one of the oldest and most successful of Microsoft's business products aside from Windows and Office. Exchange also has a mobile component through the ActiveSync protocol that allows device makers to connect to Exchange and deliver e-mail via mobile devices.
Exchange has fought a long and successful battle against Lotus Notes to become the preeminent software delivering e-mail and groupware to business customers, and Microsoft said recently that Exchange is now a nearly US$2 billion business at the company.
Going forward, the product will take on an even bigger role to help Microsoft expand its online and mobile applications strategy, as well as its plan to reach other platforms besides Windows with its software, analysts said.
Exchange Server was the first of Microsoft's business software to be released in a hosted Web-based version several years ago, and the company has since followed suit with its SharePoint collaboration, Live Communications unified-communications and Live Meeting Web conferencing applications.
In Exchange 2010, Microsoft is highlighting features that integrate its on-premise and hosted versions of the product more closely together, which the company hopes will encourage companies to begin adding hosted services to their on-premise software.
However, while hosted services can be more cost-effective for an organization, some companies may need to keep some employee mailboxes in-house for security or compliance reasons, and continue to run Exchange on premise, said Chris Voce, an analyst with Forrester Research. "For a lot of organizations, maybe a wholly hosted solution is not an option at this point," he said.
Still, being able to synchronize features like calendars and address books between the hosted version of Exchange and its on-premise version will certainly make it easier for an enterprise to create a hybrid environment that allows it to keep some of its employees' mailboxes on premise, and allow Microsoft to host other mailboxes, Voce said.
"The ability to make that happen -- allowing a company within their e-mail architecture to integrate a hosted solution with an on-premise solution -- is important for migration purposes," he said.
