The firms selling browser-based AJAX clients running against Linux backend, which offer lower ownership costs and optimized browser-based clients and, in some cases, open-source options.
There are no chances to see these vendors compete head-to-head against Microsoft. They are more probably to be installed for clients that have les sophisticated messaging needs. Another possible threat to be established order is the movement of public portal sites, as Google, into commercial mail services.
It is a messaging and collaborative software product, part of the Windows Server System line of server products and widely used by enterprises using MS infrastructure solution.
It is positioned as rival to the Lotus Notes/ Domino server from IBM and competes with a number of competitors; EGroupWare, exchange Linux, Novell GroupWise, Kerio Mail Server, Kolab, Open-Xchance, Oracle Collaboration Suite, PhpgroupWare, Scalix, Zarafa, and Zimbra.
The news version is named Exchange 2007. It is o include voice mail integration, better search and support for Web services The company also announced that the new version would run on 64-bit version of Windows only.
Microsoft Exchange has more than one half of the market for corporate email seats. The future is presenting a very good perspective, share expected to grow steadily through the end of the decade. This product has the potential to set de direction for the email market. The new release, called Exchange 2007, improves management, adds security elements, and bumps scalability. Microsoft Exchange will change the core notion f what services and email system provides.
Microsoft has the next areas of incursion into the third party market:
- Compliance and archiving capabilities, which challenge offerings vendors.
- Voice-mail services challenging services from vendors such as Siemens, and Cisco Systems.
- On-premises and hosted spam and virus blocking services, which challenge those from on-premises vendors such as Symantec, Trend Micro, and Secure Computing.
- Wireless mobile email services, improved in 2007, are a direct challenge to the offerings of the Blackberry franchise, and other services such as those from Nokia Intellisync.
In 2006, Microsoft merged his Exchange unit with its real-time communications team, responsible for VoIP, Web conferencing and instant messaging. This maneuver is effectively setting the stage for moving into converged communications. This great-converged communications push Exchange’s voice-interfaces and voice-mail services.
Voice messages are attached in a .wma file and routed to a user’s inbox. Users click on the message and have it played on his PC. They can also route the message directly to an alternative device (cell phone). Integrating voice mail with email created business efficiencies via common access command services, and that will become a cornerstone of the unified communication and collaboration movement.
Microsoft exchange 2007 will also enable users to interact with email and calendar services over the phone. Users can dial into the Microsoft Exchange server and request that their messages or calendar appointments be read to them via a conversion unit.
Some new and spectacular features include:
- Enabling Exchange to answer calls for Office Communication Server (OCS) users who are not available or do not answer.
- Allowing Office Communicators users to access Exchange 2007 voice messages.
- Having Office Communication Server route inbound calls to an Office Communication Server- controlled endpoint.
- Creating set-up and administration efficiencies for the Live Communication Server / Exchange 2007 deployments.
Maybe it will take several years to Microsoft’s voice services to be deployed but Exchange/ Outlook will replace incumbent voice-mail suppliers in at least 25% of the Exchange shops (over 5,000 users).
The predictions are optimistic: the volume adoption of Microsoft Exchange 2007 will begin earnest in 2008. The installed base will reach 40% in 2010. Via Exchange and MSN/Hotmail Microsoft has more influence on the market than any other vendor.
The main advantages are:
- Unified communications. Voice mail and fax capabilities, as well as integration with the voice components of Office Communications Server (OCS) Exchange 2007 moves from email only services to support for a large scale of communication technologies.
- Hosted messaging services. The use of Microsoft hosted, Internet-based spam and virus filtering are included in some licenses of Microsoft exchange 2007. There are also services such as archiving, continuity and encryption.
- Expansion of access mechanisms. Direct Push mobile email services are presenting an improved browser access, and voice interfaces to email and calendar services. This feature will expand the availability of rich email services in a spectacular manner.
- Message control. The more aggressive record management programs, the email abuse are a present and future danger. Exchange 2007 will add facilities for greater control of email by allowing all messages (outbound and inbound) to be interrogated prior to delivery.
Some more significant Microsoft Exchange 2007 features and changes are:
- Push email. Microsoft Exchange added push email services for mobile devices in Exchange 2007, and other features such as device and server-based search, improved meeting request handling, support for HTML messages, message flagging and self-service remote device wipe. This is a good option for large deployment across an organization. Microsoft will broadly expand the percentage of employees using the service and will, finally, challenge the established mobile suppliers.
- Recoverability/reliability. Exchange 2007 simplifies cluster set-up and adds support for shared-nothing clusters via a log shipping facility (available in SQL Server). This feature will enable geo-clustering, online continuous backup and off-site disaster recovery services. More organization will have the opportunity to build comprehensive redundancy into email systems, resulting in higher levels of system up time.
- System management. Microsoft Exchange Management Console which runs on the Microsoft Management Console has been rebuilt to improve management efficiencies. Exchange 2007 has a spectacular command line scripting shell, built on Windows PowerShell, which all allow custom management tasks to be automated. Microsoft says that PowerShell will become the model for command-line experience for all Microsoft server products. Exchange 2007 adds more granular administration privileges, such as server set-up only, message flow only, and mailbox features. Everything is done for greater security and control. The result of these features should be an easing of the management burden and reduced risk of employee-induces system errors.
- Message control. Microsoft introduces a new server role called the Hub Transport server (actual an expansion of the current sever role), which allows messages, sent and received, to be reviewed for content and other custom characteristics*size and number of recipients, destination) prior to delivery. Messages that trigger the filter can then are manipulated according to scripted business rules (names transport rules) such as bounce, copy, append, block, and send to archive or quarantine. This service will help meet increasing demands for greater message control and provide a rich opportunity for value-added services from third parties.
- Security. Exchange 2007 adds automatic support for Transport Layer Security –server to server encryption standard, whereby the Exchange gateway severs will make Transport Layer Security connections with receiving message transfer agents where possible. Exchange 2007 servers will also now automatically have Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates and the intranet messages path across all Exchange servers will be encrypted, thereby meting enterprise demands for additional email security. Transport Layer Security services alone; however, are unlikely to meet specific encryption requirements mandated by regulations such as Accountability Act (HIPAA), Gramm Leach Bliley (GBL) and U.S. health Insurance Portability.
- Outlook 2007. Concomitant with the release of Exchange 2007 will be a new version of Outlook, which, while less innovative than the new Exchange version, has some interesting new elements. Interface changes mostly relate to the “compose” and “reply” functions, and a “to do” pane integrates with tasks and calendar items. A new feature is the bidirectional synchronization, with WSS for lists, tasks, calendar appointments, contacts and documents, as well as the ability to archive data to WSS. Calendaring is improved in a spectacular manner, with schedule overlays, team calendars, subscription to Internet calendars and snapshot emailing of calendars.
Microsoft Exchange data can be protected 24x7x365 using disaster recovery and high availability solutions. Some of the key features include:
- Wizard-driven creation of new Microsoft Exchange high availability scenarios
- Automated failover and failback capabilities
- Testing and validation of the replica environment
- Built-in rewind technology
There are some valuable solutions, cost effective and relatively easy to use.
Finally, the new Microsoft Exchange 2007 includes expanded search services, a computational proof algorithm, an RSS reader, and an auto discovery of server functions. All these features help determine when a message needs to be sent to the junk folder.
The Exchange franchise is a part of Microsoft’s email portfolio. Its public consumer oriented Hotmail service has one of the largest subscriber bases with 230 million users. Microsoft is the most influential email vendor in the word. Organization must pay attention to its consumer email activities, given the longer term push that Microsoft and, most recently, Google will make toward providing email as a software as a service (SaaS) model.
Microsoft has been building an alternative mail infrastructure to Hotmail (which runs on UNIX servers). Called Windows Live Mail. This will offer some spectacular and user friendly features such as a rich AJAX client – drag and drop, right clicking, multi select and rich text editing, and a Windows based back end.
Microsoft is offering a no-fee, hosted email service to any legitimate university constituency, including students, alumni, faculty, parents, staff, and applicants. The university keeps its own domain name (or names) by pointing the Mail Exchange records of its Domain Name System to Hotmail / Windows Live mail.
Microsoft and other public portals are expected to expand no-fee email services to new constituencies, such as local, state and federal government; nonprofit organizations; primary and secondary schools in the U.S. and Canada. It is possible the see Microsoft expanding the range of offerings to include instant messaging, Internet telephony, Web conferencing, community services, video / audio conferencing, and office personal productivity services (such as word processing).
Google and Yahoo have a massive Internet presence and, to keep its own Internet presence viable, Microsoft has to offer rich Web-based functionality to commercial organizations, forcing it to elevate the capabilities of Live, thereby ultimately blurring the line between Live and traditional Office.
Given the great ambitions of MSN (in the guise of Live) to expand email services to multiple constituencies, the conclusion is that the biggest competitive threat to Exchange email franchise is MSN itself.
