Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Released Today

I know this isn’t a topic on virtualization, however I know a lot of companies that were waiting for Exchange 2010 so they could merge their upgrade and virtualization project into one.  Well, the day is here. Exchange 2010 is out and is ready for your upgrade.

Exchange Server 2010 includes a host of new features customers will benefit from, including new integrated e-mail archive and discovery functionality, new user features to battle inbox overload, voice mail management enhancements, and improvements that simplify administration.

For businesses, highlights include:

  • New integrated archiving and discovery capabilities.

  • New unified mailbox resilience model that provides high availability, disaster recovery, and back up capabilities.

  • Ability to easily delegate administration to specialized users, such the help desk or a compliance officer.

  • Comprehensive information protection capabilities—from e-mail moderation to automatic e-mail encryption.

  • The choice to run Exchange on-premises, as a service hosted by Microsoft or as a hybrid of both.

For users, highlights include:

  • A consistent inbox, calendaring, and contacts experience across the PC, browser and phone.

  • Integrated conversation view bringing together information across all folders, inbox and sent and deleted items.

  • Ability to remove (or “mute”) themselves from irrelevant conversations with the click of a button.

  • Text preview of voice mail messages in the inbox.

  • New Call Answering Rules to easily create customized voice mail rules, such as call transfer options.

  • Mail Tips to notify users about potential mistakes before they send e-mail.

Technical Details

Posted under Good Reading

This post was written by Rick Scherer on November 9, 2009

Tags:

Google Calendar Sync

I know this isn’t related to Virtualization, but it is still pretty cool.  At the office I use Outlook, which is connected to an Exchange 2007 server.  I have my entire calendar live and up to date in that thing and one problem I’ve always been faced with is accessing Exchange via Outlook on my Home PC.  Due to security limitations I need to use Outlook Web Access (OWA) from outside our firewall, however I still use Outlook at home for access to my other IMAP accounts and Hotmail - but if I ever want to look at my calendar, I need to sign into OWA…it’s a PITA if you ask me.

Well, Google released a Calendar Sync tool that syncs your Outlook calendar to Google Calendar. I decided to start using this because my homepage is iGoogle, thus I can see my calendar from home right on my homepage without having to log-in. 

Now lets take it a step further, I installed Google Sync on my Home PC and now I have all my calendar entries from Exchange sync’d to Google Calendar and then sync’d to my Home PC - editable from any device (with 2-way sync enabled).

Posted under Good Reading, Microsoft

This post was written by Rick Scherer on July 29, 2009

Tags: , , ,