Microsoft's Exchange Server 2010 promises to lower costs, improve productivity and integrate email archiving.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Giving businesses the opportunity to try out the beta of Exchange 2010 as a hosted service, Intermedia (www.intermedia.net) has become the first hosting provider to offer Microsoft’s latest collaboration suite as a hosted service.
Promising to lower costs, improve productivity and integrate email archiving, Microsoft’s (www.microsoft.com) Exchange Server 2010 beta, released in April as the first part of Microsoft’s upcoming suite of unified communications products, has been rebuilt from the ground up, and is designed to work in both on-premise and online applications.
Intermedia marketing director Danny Essner said the rollout is the product of an exclusive partnership with Microsoft as the only hosting provider in the Technology Adoption Program (or TAP). “We decided to make the beta available in a hosted version so that Intermedia could test the infrastructure to host Exchange 2010 when it becomes a commercial product later this year or early next year,” Essner said.
“[It] also give[s] our partners and customers the opportunity to start getting their hands on the new software and the new interface, which has some cool features…they don’t have to install any software or anything – it’s just a turn-key hosted solution just like our commercial hosted exchange offering.”
Exchange 2010 features have been tested out on campuses across the country as a free hosted email service, Microsoft Live@edu (get.liveatedu.com), where its expanded web browser support for Safari and FireFox has been popular among the students and faculty.
A crucial part of Microsoft’s “next generation” unified communications software, Exchange Server 2010 will remain in beta until the second half of 2009, according to Microsoft. Microsoft Exchange corporate vice president Rajesh Jha said, “This release raises the bar with new archiving and end-user innovations that will help companies save money and employees save time.”
The new release promises to simplify the administration of always-on communications and disaster recovery. It has integrated email archiving, which helps companies protect their information and meet compliance requirements, letting companies store and query emails across the organization.
Exchange 2010 is also the first product in Microsoft’s new wave of highly-integrated “Office” product line, which will include Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010. Designed to give users a consistent experience across devices, Microsoft aims to make work and collaboration easier, which will help it compete with Google (www.google.com) and other cloud-based email services that have been honing in on Microsoft’s enterprise customer base.
Essner said that Intermedia customers have been very satisfied with the hosted beta of Exchange 2010, which gave them a glimpse of the future of hosted email — one where Exchange still reigns supreme.
