Microsoft releases SP1 for Exchange Server 2007

Microsoft released the first service pack for Exchange Server 2007 on Thursday,
fixing software bugs and adding some new features to make the product more stable
and useful for business customers. However, Microsoft's Exchange partners said
there are still improvements that could be made so the latest version of Exchange
can provide customers with a more complete end-to-end messaging architecture.

Users can download Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) from Microsoft's
Web site. Anticipating
the long-awaited release of Windows Server 2008 early next year, Microsoft added
support for that product into SP1, as well as features that allow for integration
between Exchange Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007.

Windows Server 2008 support in particular is important for customers, because
there is clustering technology in Windows Server 2008 that replaces existing
technology in Windows Server 2000 and 2003 that has become obsolete, said Keith
McCall, chief technology officer and founder of Azaleos in Seattle. Azaleos
offers an Exchange hardware appliance and other e-mail management and archiving
services.

Windows Server 2008 support in SP1 provides Exchange customers with "a
more effective high-availability solution for managing infrastructure,"
he said.

For the companies offering Exchange Server as a hosted service, SP1 has technology
to resolve problems the product had with multitenancy, said Rurik Bradbury,
vice president of strategy for Microsoft hosting partner Intermedia. Multitenancy
is when a single Exchange Server environment serves multiple customers. Improvements
to multitenancy in SP1 make the product more stable for hosting partners, said
Bradbury, whose company has been testing the service pack.

Microsoft also did an about-face and reinstalled the "public folders"
feature of Outlook Web Access, the Web-based version of the Outlook e-mail client,
in SP1, he said. Workgroups within an organization traditionally could share
information through public folders on Outlook Web Access. However, Microsoft
"was trying to make everyone move" to its Office SharePoint Server
to provide this feature, "but now backtracked in the face of an outcry
from Exchange customers," Bradbury said.

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