Microsoft Wednesday released the anticipated second service pack for Exchange 2003, which is one half of the software the company is developing to significantly improve the delivery of e-mail to Windows-based mobile devices.
The mobile features in Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) are a direct hit at popular BlackBerry devices from Research in Motion (RIM), which offers the same instant updates to corporate e-mail, calendars, and contacts.
Today, Microsoft uses Short Message Service (SMS) to notify a mobile device of new e-mail. The device then retrieves the e-mail from the server. With the new Direct Push Technology in SP2, e-mail will automatically be pushed to the device using an HTTP connection maintained by the device.
In addition to the mobile features, SP2 includes new spam protection features including support for Sender ID and updates to the Exchange Instant Message Filter, remote management including a Remote Wipe feature to clear data from lost devices, policy enforcement controls such as requiring a password to unlock a device, an increase in mailbox size limits to 75G bytes in the Standard Edition, and new address book and public folder support.
“Exchange Server 2003 SP2 marks an important milestone in our efforts to provide customers with better protection, reliability and easier administration of their messaging infrastructure as well as significantly improved support for mobile messaging,” says Megan Kidd, senior product manager at Microsoft’s Exchange Server Group.
Microsoft is touting SP2 as an alternative to RIM devices because users will not need any extra middleware and licenses on top of Exchange, which are needed to support the BlackBerry.
The catch, however, is that in order for SP2 to deliver its push capabilities for e-mail it requires mobile devices running Microsoft’s Messaging & Security Feature Pack (MSFP) for Windows Mobile 5.0, which won’t be available until next month.
Current Windows mobile devices running Mobile 5.0 can be ugraded when MSFP ships if device manufacturers offer the upgrade for their devices. New devices that support the feature pack won’t ship until early next year.
Early reviews of MSFP have been mixed. In June, Gartner said MSFP “does not go far enough with security for enterprise-wide deployment.” And said end users would need “to use third-party vendor security add-ons to make Windows suitable for mobile use.” Gartner noted one of the missing security elements was data encryption.
Microsoft partners Palm and Motorola say their Windows Mobile 5.0-compliant devices with MSFP will be available in early 2006. Partner DataViz is making available for download its Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync enabled client, RoadSync, which will support Direct Push on the Symbian operating system.
Users with current Exchange Server 2003 deployments can download SP2 as a free upgrade from the Microsoft Web site.
