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October 12,
2005
Volume 1, Number
10 |
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In
This Issue · SQL 2005 ·
ZAG Technical Services, Inc. ·
Exchange Service Pack 2 Info
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Technology Report:
Microsoft Exchange Service Pack 2
Normally, a mere Service Pack would not be significant enough to be discussed in a newsletter. Microsoft’s soon to be released Service Pack 2 for Exchange is the exception to this rule, however. This Service Pack is significant enough to warrant highlighting it in detail.
Microsoft will be releasing Exchange Service Pack 2 very shortly. With this Service Pack, Microsoft will be making great improvements to the already strong offering. The Service Pack will benefit Exchange in three main functions:
Increase mailbox storage size
The first benefit to Service Pack 2 will be that the storage size limitation of 16GB will be increased dramatically to 75GB. This will greatly benefit users of Exchange 2003 Standard Edition. In fact, current users of Exchange 2000 Standard may want to upgrade to Exchange 2003 Standard just for the increased storage size.
This is, by no means a reason for companies to stop looking at Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition. Enterprise Edition will continue to offer significant advantages over the Standard Edition. These include: a storage limit of 16 terabytes, supporting up to four storage groups with five databases per group, and the ability to support clustering.
Overall, Exchange will continue to offer customers greater flexibility in how their mail is managed.
Significant Windows Mobile improvements
There will also be a dramatic improvement in Windows Mobile integration. With the recent release of Windows Mobile 5.0, SmartPhones will be able to be always connected to the Exchange server to receive new email, calendar, contact and task notifications in real time.
Users and administrators will have significantly more control over the security of the devices. Administrators will be able to force the use of passwords to unlock devices, and can even configure them to be wiped in the event that unsuccessful passwords are entered more times than allowed. One of the greatest improvements will be that Administrators will have the ability to remotely wipe the devices over the web. These improvements go a long way in protecting the security of the data on the devices.
It should also be noted that since the data doesn’t reside only on the phone, but is rather synched with Exchange, wiping a device is not a devastating occurrence. Rather, the device can just be resynched to get all of the user’s information back on the phone.
The communication between the SmartPhone and the Exchange server will also use better compression to make it a faster experience, thereby improving performance.
Additional Outlook properties such as task synchronization and the ability to have pictures in Outlook will also be allowed. The Global Address List will also be supported on the phones.
Better SPAM Protection
The final major improvement of Service Pack 2 will be the increased ability of Exchange and Outlook 2003 to block SPAM messages. These improvements should further reduce the number of false positives and allow the service to catch an increased number of SPAM messages. Most likely, customers will continue to see significant value in services offered by companies such as BrightMail and eDoxs. However, the added layer that Exchange offers will grow that much more.
Summary
All in all, ZAG is very excited about the upcoming release of Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2. We will contact our customers as soon as we feel the Service Pack has been significantly tested with real world deployments. Please let us know if you have any questions.
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