Microsoft Exchange 2010

One of the most surprising aspects of Exchange Server 2010 is the lack of backward compatibility offered. While those of us in the Information Technology market can’t afford to look back, or stay stuck in the past, it is unrealistic to expect organizations to upgrade their whole infrastructure for one application, however important it might be.

Historically, just about everything Microsoft made was backward compatible to one degree or another. On average their software was at least useable with the two previous versions of the release. While the newer features and benefits weren’t realized until we were up to date, at least the platform and its inherent improvements were able to be utilized.

After saying all that, there is a little bit of backward compatibility built in, since the latest beta release there is now the ability to co-exist with Server 2003 and Exchange 2007 with Service Pack 2. When the first beta came out it was Server 2008 only, which annoyed a lot of the IT community and threatened to marginalize the product. That’s a lot to ask at any time, let alone during a recession where budgets are tight and taking risks in unheard of.

However, the Exchange 207 Service Pack 2 was released yesterday so will be able to be further tested with the final beta of Exchange 2010 for those who have the patience.

The in-place upgrade that is now available is either a blessing or a curse. While it’s much more convenient for small businesses or home users to upgrade software, for the larger organization this isn’t the case. Upgrading means downtime and the risk of incompatibility with existing applications. Often it is much safer, and easier to upgrade a machine anew and integrate it into the network all shiny and fresh. A well planned refresh of the infrastructure would allow an organization to take down part of its system and do fresh installs while the existing nodes chugged away as normal. Once the new servers were ready they would be connected together in isolation before being introduced back into the wild. Doing it this way would enable rigorous testing before go live and prevent any system errors or incompatibilities affecting live service.

Now Microsoft have enabled Exchange 2010 to play nicely with Server 2003 it should become more acceptable. Rather than having to upgrade the entire server farm, only those servers hosting Exchange 2010 will need to be upgraded. This will save thousands of dollars when it comes to deployment time, and a much quicker turnaround when it comes to installation. Upgrading twenty servers instead of two hundred is a much better prospect for even the most ardent Microsoft haters.

From what we have seen so far, and with the changes announced in the final beta, the positives of upgrading to Exchange 2010 outweigh the negatives. I don’t see anyone rushing out to deploy it as soon as it’s released, but it’s a lot more likely it will be deployed than it was a month ago.

Microsoft announced that the new Exchange Server 2010 will ship by the end of the year. It released the final beta recently along with Forefront for Exchange Server 2010 which is a security add-on for the server software.

The design philosophy of the new Exchange is that of a hybrid. It is designed to work equally well as a hosted email service as it is a corporate one. The flexibility and scalability touted in previous press releases certainly hint at a much more robust and flexible approach to the software.

Microsoft has tested the application thoroughly using its own infrastructure, and the Live@Edu programme. This programme was a free offering to students which offered a co-hosted Exchange setup free of charge with ten gigabytes of storage per user and an online storage facility called SkyDrive which enables students to add files to cloud based network folders.

The software giant also used its own corporate network to host the new Exchange 2010 infrastructure. In a statement they said that it was the perfect way to iron out any last minute issues while serving thousands of mailboxes concurrently.

Michael Atalla, the Exchange Group Product Manager announced the release on the team blog this week. He also highlighted some new features such as the interoperability with Exchange 2007 with Service Pack 2, and the ability to co-exist with Server 2003 servers. Initially Exchange 2010 was only going to work on Server 2008 machines, but it may be the case now that is can work with the older OS. There was also added support for 64-bit Server 2008, upgrades from the Exchange 2010 Release Candidate to the Release To Manufacturing version, which is also good news for early adopters. It means now that the RC version can be updated to the RTM rather than being uninstalled and installed anew.

This release is another example of the sea change at Microsoft over the past couple of years. They seem to be listening to users, interacting and consulting with them and even taking some of the feedback on board. We now seem to be getting software that we want, rather than what they want us to have. Windows 7 is another example of a product that has gone though lengthy feedback testing and beta’s before being released to manufacturing.

Microsoft is also attempting to improve the email discovery and compliance aspect of its email platform. Feedback from tester so far indicates that this isn’t ready yet, and probably won’t be at the time of release. It will probably be along in a year in the first Service Pack for Exchange 2010.

While the compliance aspect isn’t fully finished, the improved interface and administrative tools are. They have been received positively so far from Exchange experts around the world as it makes it much easier to maintain the infrastructure and individual users, all from one interface. This cuts down significantly the amount of administration it will take to keep the nodes functioning.

Exchange 2010 is expected to ship at the end of this year.