Exchange 2010 beta leads kickoff of new Office lineup

Messaging server plays duel service, corporate role in 2010

Microsoft Wednesday kicked off the rollout of its Office 2010 product lineup with the initial public beta release of the next version of Exchange Server.

Clear Choice Test Package:
Slideshow: Screenshots of the Exchange 2010 interface
Exchange 2010: Sneak Peek
Exchange 2010: Webmail features on par with Outlook
Exchange 2010: Better scalability and control for administrators

Microsoft unveiled the Office 2010 product moniker for the first time and Exchange will be the first product to roll out under the banner. Previously the Office lineup was lumped under the codename Office 14. 

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Microsoft Wednesday kicked off the rollout of its Office 2010 product lineup with the initial public beta release of the next version of Exchange Server.

Clear Choice Test Package:
Slideshow: Screenshots of the Exchange 2010 interface
Exchange 2010: Sneak Peek
Exchange 2010: Webmail features on par with Outlook
Exchange 2010: Better scalability and control for administrators

Microsoft unveiled the Office 2010 product moniker for the first time and Exchange will be the first product to roll out under the banner. Previously the Office lineup was lumped under the codename Office 14. 

The 2010 version of Exchange is being touted as a hybrid – equally at home as the foundation for a hosted e-mail service or a corporate messaging infrastructure.

Microsoft already hosts 5 million users on Exchange 2010 as part of its Live@Edu program.

Microsoft says it has specially architected Exchange 2010 for high-availability and cross-domain integration using techniques like pairing the server with Windows Server 2008 clustering technology and directory federation features. (Compare Messaging products.)

“Before, the hosting platform was an add-on, now it is built into the product,” says Julia White, director of Exchange product management.

She would not give specifics on what has changed under the covers of Exchange to make 2010 a natural hosting platform while the 2007 version was not. In general, she pointed to improved I/O performance, and database, storage and high-availability architectures that were changed in Exchange 2010.

But some early testers say moving to a hybrid environment that combines on-premises and hosted mailboxes isn’t as easy as Microsoft might make it sound and although there is good progress users should be cautious.

“To do some of these things they had to do some significant re-architecting of the product,” said one tester who asked not to be identified. “Some might think that is akin to a Version 1 product.” The tester said Microsoft still has to work through some of the kinks, but that none of them are showstoppers.

Exchange 2010, which is 64-bit only, is slated to ship before the end of this year. Other Office 2010 products – Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 – will go into limited beta in the fall and are slated to ship in the first half of 2010. Another major piece of the Office product puzzle, Office Communications Server R2, shipped in February and the next release is not yet on the official Office 2010 roadmap.

The Exchange beta includes a number of user and administrative features, including new archiving capabilities, but perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic is its online and on-premises split personality.

The company hopes that personality will make it easier for corporate users to straddle environments with some users on internal systems and others using hosted mailboxes from a service. Features, such as Powershell support, will give administrators one set of tools for managing internal users, users on hosted platforms, and the infrastructure needed to bridge the gap between the two.