Microsoft updates Exchange 5.5

Microsoft today rolled out a service pack update to its Exchange 5.5 messaging server.

Service Pack 1 for Exchange 5.5, available for free download from Microsoft's Web site includes some minor bug fixes and new features in the areas of collaboration, administration, and migration capabilities, the company said.

The service pack includes the Outlook 98 messaging client as well as tools and components for building applications.

To boost security, the Exchange Key Management Server has been updated to use Microsoft Certificate Server as its Certificate Authority, which allows clients such as Outlook to send S/MIME encrypted and signed mail. Also included are Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (UCE) prevention, for controlling unsolicited email, and message filtering functions, an administrative feature that allows users to save a copy of all inbound and outbound messages.

SP 1 offers support for X509.v3, the antispam industry standard. It also includes routing objects libraries, which are sets of components that simplify the development of routing and approval applications.

The new pack also includes migration wizards that support migrations for Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino servers, as well as IBM OfficeVision SNA Distribution Services connectors that can run on the Digital Alpha platform, so all Exchange connectors can run on Alpha systems.

The pack features the newest release of the Exchange Chat Service, which allows real-time conversion and collaboration among users on the Internet or on private networks.

On the client side, the pack also includes the Outlook HTML Form Converter, a wizard that allows users to convert Outlook-based forms to an HTML equivalent based on Active Server Pages.