Thursday, April 16, 2009 9:35 AM
by
digitaldive
Wave 14 – Exchange Beta is out!
I’ve been keeping a close eye on everything that is Wave 14 (Office Suite, Visio, Project, Exchange, SharePoint), as I’m pretty excited by some of the advancements I’ve seen. So over the course of the year, I’ll be posting regular updates on what has become public for Wave 14 (keep an eye out for the Wave 14 tags). And today, it’s Exchange!
Exchange 14, now known as 2010, is the first wave 14 product to hit beta (yay). As more of the wave 14 products surface, you’ll start seeing how they have been developed and built together to provide true interoperability. For now, you can download the Exchange 2010 beta here.
Exchange 2010 brings with it the following enhancements (you can find out further details here:
Lower costs with more flexible deployment and management options. Exchange 2010 provides organizations with the same enterprise-grade capabilities whether deployed on-premises or as a service from Microsoft or partners — or as a mix of both. Further, for customers deploying the server, the new release simplifies the way organizations provide always-on communications and disaster recovery, meaning administrators spend less time managing their e-mail system. Exchange 2010 further improves performance running on lower-cost direct-attached storage, enabling organizations to dramatically reduce storage costs by up to 85 percent without sacrificing performance or reliability.
Protect information and meet compliance requirements with the new e-mail archive. As e-mail volume grows, companies must address increasing compliance, legal and e-discovery concerns, but today, according to Osterman Research, only 28 percent of organizations currently archive their e-mail content (Osterman Research, 2008). Exchange 2010 introduces an integrated e-mail archive. The new solution makes it easier to store and query e-mail across the organization using the Exchange software that organizations already know and use.
Improve user productivity with the ultimate inbox experience. Basex Inc. recently estimated that the average number of corporate e-mail messages received per person per day is expected to reach more than 93 by 2010. In addition, businesses lose $650 billion annually in productivity due to unnecessary interruptions including those from e-mail (Basex, 2008). Exchange 2010, together with Microsoft Outlook 2010, will give people more control over their communications with features such as these:
-MailTips. Warn users before they commit an e-mail faux pas such as sending mail to large distribution groups, to recipients who are out of the office or to recipients outside the organization, helping protect against information leaks and reduce unnecessary e-mail messages.
-Voice Mail Preview. See text previews of voice mail directly in Outlook.
-Ignore Conversation. This e-mail “mute button” allows people to remove themselves from an irrelevant e-mail string, reducing unwanted e-mail and runaway reply-all threads.
-Conversation View. Combine related e-mail messages in a single conversation to reduce inbox clutter.
-Call Answering Rules. Create customized “Press 1 for …” call-routing menus with Exchange voice mail.
-Consistent Experience. Use Outlook on the PC, a mobile phone or a browser for the same experience with enhancements in Outlook Mobile and Outlook Web Access.
Exchange Server 2010 will become available in the second half of 2009. Additional Office products including Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 are scheduled to enter technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and release to manufacturing in the first half of 2010.
