Beyond Messaging

Exchange 2007 SP2 is a Gateway to Upgrade to 2010

Like a "gateway drug" Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2 will get you on the road to stronger stuff available with Exchange 2012. Let's have a little roundup of some news and information about the new service pack.

First, the What's New in Exchange Server 2007 SP2 page is now online.  (It wasn't working the other day for some reason)  Here are some of the highlights. 

• Once all of the Client Access servers in your organization have been upgraded to Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) you can deploy Exchange Server 2010 in your organization.

• Now has support for Windows Server Backup to back up and restore your Exchange 2007 SP2 databases.

• Enhanced Auditing features.

• Dynamic AD schema update and validation feature helps avoid conflicts when new schema are added.

• Better public folder quota management.

• New "cmdlet parameters" to help centralized administration of Exchange organization settings

Technet's Reasons to upgrade to Exchange Server 2007 SP2 also lists this tidbit:

For the administrator, Exchange Server 2007 SP2 provides advanced protection options against e-mail security threats, such as spam and viruses, as well as the tools to help manage internal compliance and high availability needs.

Visual Tour of Exchange 2010

Microsoft Exchange 2010, available in beta, will have some new features of interest to IT departments and users alike. 

Here is a good visual tour of Exchange 2010 from Infoworld.com.  Some of the hightlights.

• Voicemail previews, with automatic transcription of voicemails.

• Outlook Web Access will support Firefox and Safari, instead of just Internet Explorer

• Improved delivery report information, including more information when using Exchange Server.

• Exchange Control Panel will let users control their own settings such as cell phone number, which used to require AD access to change.

• Improved searches, multi-mailbox searches, ability to send search results to another mailbox as a folder.

Here is the Exchange 2010 Beta page from Microsoft.com.