As Microsoft updates the individual key components of its enterprise software, integrating those pieces is proving challenging.

The issues center on Exchange 2007 and its relationship to Vista, released late last year along with Exchange to corporate users, Virtual Server 2005 R2 and the forthcoming Longhorn Server, slated to ship by the end of the year. In a nutshell, Exchange 2007 can’t run on Microsoft’s most current virtualization software, Exchange’s management tools won’t run on the just released Vista desktop operating system and the 64-bit messaging server is not compatible with Microsoft’s forthcoming 64-bit server operating system called Longhorn.

Microsoft officials say it all comes down to timing issues in the development processes of the individual software and that solutions are in the works. Critics say it is another indication that Microsoft’s product teams often are marching to different drummers.

For corporate users, it means deft deployment planning to make sure everything they need works together even though they are getting it from a single vendor.

In any case, users are already reacting, especially in regards to virtualization, which has become a hot bed of networking activity, as well as, a major area of competition for Microsoft with VMWare and open source Xen on Linux platforms.

Ironically, users can run Exchange 2007 on the VMWare platform, which does support 64-bit guest systems, and some users are making the switch.