Microsoft testing next Exchange

Microsoft has started testing the next version of its Exchange e-mail and calendar software, a product that Microsoft said is designed to run from the ground up as a hosted service that can work simultaneously with more than one business.

The new version, code-named E14, is in limited private beta testing as a traditional server product with "a select number" of businesses.

Microsoft has started testing E14, the next version of Exchange. Among its features is an improved Web client, Outlook Live, seen here.

(Credit: CNET News)

But Microsoft also recognized that traditional beta testing wouldn't help it much in getting a sense of the multi-tenant support. So starting in October 2007, the company started seeking out universities and schools willing to test E14 as part of Exchange Labs.

The move is important. Although Microsoft has continued to take share in recent years from longtime rival Lotus Notes, the company faces the prospect of growing competition from Web-based alternatives from Google and others.

Microsoft said on Tuesday that there are now more than 3.5 million people, including students, faculty, staff, and alumni, who are testing the next Exchange at more than 1,500 educational institutions.

Among the features is an updated Web client, Outlook Live. Among the changes from today's Outlook Web Access is support for managing distribution groups, setting up rules and viewing other e-mail accounts, things that typically have required the desktop version of Outlook.

It wouldn't say when to expect a public beta or the final version of E14, but I am told it will have more to say on the subject sometime this quarter. The company also plans to post a video on its testing experiences later on Tuesday.

Although Microsoft has taken steps to make Exchange better suited to hosting with E14, the software maker and some of its partners already provide hosted Exchange using the current version, Exchange 2007. Microsoft officially started offering the Exchange Online service late last year, after testing it for some time.

[draystl]

Dear Microsoft:
I beg you; please make this version work in browsers other than IE, you know, standards compliant browsers like Firefox, Safari.....

[lxnyce]

The current version doesn't even work with IE8. It's a guaranteed crash if I right click on any link in Web Outlook with the IE8 beta. Been that way since I have been running beta 2. The only reason I use IE is for the mail support, and yet now I have to fire up FF just to get my mail attachments. It's freaking ridiculous.

[Mr. Dee]

I agree, OWA needs all the visual experience of IE, it looks awful on Ff. Microsoft is really embracing the web, makes sense, its logical. Installing software is just becoming more irrelevant as the years go by for certain scenarios. Imagine that, by 2010, I will have 5 Microsoft Office applications in tabs instead of buttons on the Windows Taskbar.

Ina, can't you get us some news on Office 14 itself? The only thing I have read so for is off UX evangelist blog about it coming possibly late 2009 or early 2010.

[Rants&Raves]

Ina: Please tell us: did they finally bust that ridiculous limit on mailbox sizes ? In 2009, with a growing inflow of communications, that artificial limitation makes Outlook look more and more like a toy.

[Penguinisto]

You can lift the mailbox DB size by buying the enterprise edition (that's right: $$$$$$$!)

(what kind of idiot decision was made to store mailboxes in a binary database format anyway? Everyone else on the planet uses mbox or ASCII, FFS...)

[MMC Racing]

Peng - see comment below, your information is Exchange 2003 old.

[Penguinisto]

One request: Actual LDAP integration with non-Outlook clients.

Thx in advance,
/P

[MMC Racing]

What does this mean? You can do LDAP lookups against AD for the address list.. Just because you don't know how or a company decides not to impliment that through the firewall.......

[Maclover1]

Limit on mailbox sizes? That "limit" is set by your Exchange server admin.

[Rants&Raves]

Try growing your PST beyond 1 gig and get back to me.

[Penguinisto]

Ah - I misunderstood it as well - I thought he meant that artificial (and stupid) 72GB mailbox DB restriction on the server.

[Maclover1]

You have an old PST file, you need to upgrade it. When Outlook 2003 came out....in 2003 it introduced Unicode .PST files that have some kind of crazy high file size now 2TB I think? Same for Outlook 2007. I have seen many .PST files that are big, 2-6gig easy.

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/tip/0,,sid43_gci1226189,00.html

[MMC Racing]

Penguinisto - talking out your @ss as usual? There is no database size limit in Exchange 2007 standard - the limit is on the number of databases.

Educate yourself:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/support/ee/transform.aspx?ProdName=Exchange&ProdVer=8.0&EvtID=9689&EvtSrc=MSExchangeIS&LCID=1033

[fdunn3]

The limit on Outlook PSTs is now 20GB with the current Version of Office.
Although I would not recommend getting anywhere near that size before you cap them and start another.
The older PSTs crashed at 2GB and if you were lucky you could get your data back.

I once had an Exec travel to Hawaii and call me because "She couldn't get her email over Dial-up"(not using OWA, using the Oulook Client). I asked her what was happening and she said it just hung. So I went through her configuration with her and she was trying to open up a hosted PST file of about 800MB in addition to her online mailbox!
I had her disconnect the PST and all was fine. She is no longer here, but she was a pack-rat as she kept every email she ever got.
It was good for a laugh that day, but then without users like that we'd not have jobs. ;-)

[Rants&Raves]

Wikipedia says 20 gigs with the Unicode support. Still is too small. There are tons of free databases out there this could be hooked to, ways in which those limits would be made irrelevant. Why are they still even there ?

[Maclover1]

A lot of companies are getting rid of PST files because of stuff like SOX. The use solutions that move older email to cheaper storage, Veritas has a good product. That way all of your email is technically on the Exchange server and retained to meet legal requirements.

Keeping big .PST files is just plain stupid. The bigger they are the slower the load. Slower to access. More prone to corruption unless you run scanpst and compact them regularly.

20gigs of email would be an un-godly amount of email anyhow. The biggest I have seen when managing Exchange was an account on an Exchange server that was 12gig. The users had no restrictions because of his title, and had over 400,000 email messages. Probably 395,000 were never looked at.

[Vegaman_Dan]

PST files no longer have the limits that they used to for usability. It's not unusual to have a 10Gb or larger PST file that works just fine.

Now the wisdom of having *any* one file that big regardless of OS is questionable as you introduce all sorts of data backup issues later.

[topgunb2]

where are apple fanboys? oh i just realized they have nothing to talk about on this front!

[MMC Racing]

On the corporate side, it is the Linux fanbois :)

[draystl]

What does being an 'apple fanboy' have to do with Exchange??