Today we have announced the public beta of Exchange (drum roll please) 2010.  There are off course multiple new and exciting things within this release.

The RTM version of Exchange 2010 should be on the shelf in the second half of calendar year 2009.

There are a lot of new features and enhancements, I will name some of my favorites. For more information just go to the links at the end of this blog.

User Experience:

• Ignore conversation; this is a mute button to remove you from irrelevant conversations, such as reply all mail.
• MailTips; warm before sending to large DL’s like All employees
• Voice Mail Preview; i love this features, It will translate your voicemail into text. Very handy if you are in meeting and you wanted to know what the voicemail is about.
• External Calendar Sharing; you can now share you calendar with others

OWA / Mobile Experience:

• Multiple Browser Support; OWA premium support on Firefox and Safari in addition to IE.
• Instant Messaging; integration with OCS Server 2007 R2 (CWA) or Windows Live Messenger service so users can change their status and change see other users presence.
• SMS text messaging; you know how that is off course, but now you can do it from OWA
• Free/busy within Outlook Mobile; see contact’s free or busy status on your mobile device

Off course there is much more stuff, especially for you admins out there. Just follow these links for more info:

Exchange 2010 on TechNet for you admins: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124558(EXCHG.140).aspx

Announcing Exchange 2010: http://edge.technet.com/Media/Announcing-Exchange-2010-Beta/

Exchange 2010 home page: http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/default.aspx

See ya,

Jeroen J.