Exchange Server 2007 Beta 2 Product Overview
Published: June 11, 2006
Introduction
For most businesses today, e-mail is the mission-critical communications tool that allows their people to produce the best results. This greater reliance on e-mail has increased the number of messages sent and received, the variety of work getting done, and even the speed of business itself. Amid this change, employee expectations have also evolved. Today, employees look for rich, efficient access--to e-mail, calendars, attachments, contacts, and more--no matter where they are or what type of device they are using.
For IT professionals, delivering a messaging system that addresses these needs must be balanced against other requirements such as security and cost. Enterprise security requirements have become more complex as the demand and use for e-mail has increased. Today, IT departments must contend with e-mail security threats that are wide ranging: continually evolving spam and viruses, noncompliance risks, the vulnerability of e-mail to interception and tampering, in addition to the potential harmful effects of natural and man-made disasters.
While security is clearly a priority, IT is ever cognizant of the need to manage cost. Time, money, and resource constraints are a fact of life as IT is made accountable to do more with less. As a result, IT professionals look for a messaging system that addresses enterprise and employee needs while also being cost-effective to manage. The system must be efficient to deploy, provide a high return on investment, and allow the messaging administrator to be as productive as possible.
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 has been designed specifically to meet the above challenges and address the needs of the different groups who have a stake in the messaging system. The new capabilities of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 deliver the advanced protection your company demands, the anywhere access your people want, and the operational efficiency you, in IT, need.
Built-in Protection for the Company
Exchange Server 2007 offers built-in protective technologies to keep your business moving, reduce spam and viruses, enable confidential communications, and help your company to be compliant. These features can be configured to run on premise or as hosted services on the Internet.
Key Benefits:
| • | Keeps communication alive and e-mail flowing with enterprise-class availability and reliability |
| • | Helps safeguard users and the organization’s valuable data from the harmful effects of spam and viruses |
| • | Provides trusted communications within the organization automatically and without added cost or complexity |
| • | Simplifies regulatory compliance in a way that supports the different needs of employees, compliance managers, and messaging administrators |
Anywhere Access for Employees
With Exchange Server 2007, employees get anywhere access to their e-mail, voice mail, calendars, and contacts from a variety of clients and devices.
Key Benefits:
| • | Increases the productivity of today’s employees who require the ability to respond quickly at home, work, or on the go |
| • | Offers employees a single universal inbox to access all of their important communications--including voice mail, fax, and e-mail--while avoiding the cost and effort of maintaining separate systems |
| • | Delivers a fast, seamless, and familiar Microsoft Office Outlook experience across different devices and clients with no requirement for extra software or services outside of an Internet connection |
| • | Improves collaboration and productivity by making it easier to find and share data, documents, and schedules from anywhere |
Operational Efficiency for IT
Exchange Server 2007 enables new levels of operational efficiency through capabilities that optimize hardware and networking investments and features that help make administrators more productive.
Key Benefits:
| • | Gets more from hardware, software, and network investments through the power of x64 computing and bandwidth-optimizing routing algorithms |
| • | Improves administrator productivity by making it easier to find and fix problems, and automate tasks more simply |
| • | Drives deployment efficiencies with automatic client connections, a new server roles-based architecture, and improved diagnostics and monitoring |
| • | Simplifies integrating Exchange Server data within line-of-business applications and third-party solutions through new Exchange Web Services |
The Outlook Experience
In addition to benefits and capabilities described above, Exchange Server 2007 offers the best integration with the broadest range of clients. Exchange Server supports a complete Outlook experience, from Outlook on the desktop to Outlook Web Access, Outlook Mobile, and the new Outlook Voice Access, a feature of Exchange Server 2007. Exchange Server also integrates with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and other Office applications as well as third-party systems and devices.
Exchange Server 2007 Features at a Glance
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Anti-spam and Antivirus | Built-in defenses against spam and phishing e-mail as well as new antivirus filtering and scanning capabilities provide comprehensive protection. |
Confidential Messaging | Automatic intra-org encryption and enhanced support for IRM (Information Rights Management) help protect the confidentiality of messages traveling within the enterprise. |
Compliance | Message transport and storage rules can control routing, encryption, and retention to meet organizational and regulatory compliance requirements. |
Business Continuity | New data replication capabilities (local and clustered) keep the system highly available while limiting the need and frequency for tape backup. |
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Collaboration and Productivity | Enhanced calendaring, out-of-office, resource booking, and meeting scheduling capabilities simplify collaboration and increase productivity. |
Unified Messaging | New Exchange Unified Messaging goes beyond e-mail to deliver more types of communications to the inbox, including faxes and voice mail, as well as offering new capabilities such as inbox access from a regular phone. |
Web-Based Messaging | A rich Outlook-like experience from any Internet connected computer with a supported browser provides encrypted access to the inbox, powerful search, and the ability to view different types of attachments. |
Mobile Messaging | Exchange Server ActiveSync technology delivers an improved Outlook e-mail and calendaring experience on mobile devices, while offering enhanced device and security policy control. |
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Performance and Scalability | Server consolidation and improved storage efficiency are achieved through the extended memory and larger caches of x64 systems; a more efficient routing algorithm ensures the best use of bandwidth. |
Administration | New graphical and command-line interfaces offer improved manageability and increased automation while integrated tools simplify maintenance. |
Deployment | Modular setup and server provisioning based on server roles, as well as capabilities to automatically discover Outlook and mobile clients simplify deployment. |
Extensibility and Programmability | New Web services-based application programming interface (API) and .NET integration via Exchange Management Shell tasks enable rapid development for custom and third-party applications. |
