Exchange Server 2003 Product Overview

To compete successfully in today's challenging business climate, organizations must enable more efficient ways for information workers to communicate and collaborate. E-mail is currently the most widely used collaborative technology. More businesses use Exchange for e-mail-based collaboration than any other product. Exchange 2003 enables information workers to gain access to critical business communications almost whenever and wherever they need to and is designed to deliver greater security, availability, and reliability. Exchange 2003 sets a new benchmark for low total cost of ownership (TCO) by helping your information technology (IT) staff to do more with less through improved management tools.

If you're in an Exchange Server 5.5 environment, Exchange 2003 offers large costs savings by operating on fewer servers. With new resources and tools, the upgrade and migration to Exchange 2003 is smooth, fast, and cost-effective.

Exchange 2003 is available in two editions:

• Exchange 2003 Standard Edition is designed to meet the messaging and collaboration needs of small and medium-size corporations. With Exchange 2003 Standard Edition, you get:
  • Exchange 2003.
  • The flexibility to be configured as a Microsoft Office Outlook® Web Access front-end server.
  • 16-gigabyte (GB) data storage maximum.
  • Recovery Storage Group.
• Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition is designed for large enterprise corporations and enables you to create multiple storage groups and multiple databases. Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition provides an unlimited message store that removes the constraints on the amount of data that a single server can manage. With Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition, you get:
  • All the features and products included in Exchange 2003 Standard Edition.
  • Database size limited only by your hardware (with a maximum size of 16 terabytes).
  • Multiple databases per server.
  • Clustering support for four nodes on Microsoft Windows® 2000 Advanced Server or eight nodes on Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 Enterprise Edition.

To determine which edition best suits your business needs, explore the tables on the Choose Your Edition page.

Features at a Glance

For more information about Exchange 2003 features and abilities, see the Exchange 2003 Features page.

Technology Components for More Secure Client Access

Exchange 2003 is designed to interoperate with multiple clients.

Figure 1: Secure, flexible options for connecting to Exchange 2003

In Figure 1, each client is shown accessing Exchange 2003 through the Internet and secured by a combination of firewalls and, in this particular case, Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA Server) acting as a gateway with enhanced security for Exchange and other server infrastructure.

Outlook Compatibility

Outlook 2003, Outlook 2002, and Outlook 2000 can connect to Exchange 2003*. Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003 are designed to perform over slow, latent, or poor network connections. Examples are dial-up lines and wireless data links such as 1xRTT and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). New Outlook 2003 features include:

• Exchange Cached Mode.
• VPN-less connections that use the new remote procedure call (RPC) over HTTPS capability in Outlook 2003.

Remote Access

Outlook Web Access in Exchange 2003 has been improved for easier use, speed, and greater security. The popularity of Outlook Web Access is in part because the product is easy to support and use and no installation is necessary. Any browser-based computer can access Exchange with greater security, and, with the new UI, most users have to look twice to see if they are using Outlook 2003 or Outlook Web Access. The features include:

• Spelling checker
• Task list support
• HTML and attachment blocking (prevents spam and potential beacon-finding code)
• Automatic logoff (Forgot to logoff? Don't worry—the inactivity time-out automatically logs off and closes out your session.)

You also get support for S/MIME in Outlook Web Access so that you can digitally sign and encrypt your e-mail messages.

Exchange Server ActiveSync

Windows powered mobile devices, such as the Pocket PC, come with the Microsoft ActiveSync® client and Pocket Outlook built in, which enables you to sync your e-mail messages, calendar, and contacts lists directly with Exchange 2003. Exchange administrators can enable this from the same screen used to manage Exchange e-mail accounts.

Outlook Mobile Access

Similar to Outlook Web Access for desktop browsers, Outlook Mobile Access is designed for security-enhanced access from mobile device browsers. With Exchange 2003, users can gain access to their mailboxes from mobile devices with HTML, XHTML (WAP 2.x), and CHTML-based microbrowsers.

Pervasive Productivity Scenarios

The flexible options for information access and the new ways to stay connected enable information workers to be more productive and in control when and how they communicate.

• Mobile workers, such as sales and service staff using portable computers and running Outlook 2003 over a wireless network, are free to roam and communicate. No longer tethered to a cable, they can check their e-mail messages, look up their contacts and schedules, and continue to communicate with their customers, partners, and coworkers wherever and whenever they choose—in the car, at their customer's location, or even at the airport. Outlook 2003 is designed to work over slow and poor network connections: Mobile workers are shielded from network issues and can continue working with their Exchange information while Exchange and Outlook use the available network resources.
• Remote workers can work at home, a remote office, a customer site, an 802.11 hot spot such as their local Internet café, and can start Outlook or use Outlook Web Access from any Internet-connected computer to gain security-enhanced access to Exchange. Outlook Web Access adds more freedom by enabling them to stay in touch through Exchange without their own portable computer. Outlook Web Access extends the latest features in Exchange 2003 to any browser-based computer, including non-Microsoft operating systems. And because Outlook Web Access doesn't need installation, your IT departments can reduce support costs.
• Traveling executives can run Outlook 2003 from their hotel or between flight connections over a dial-up line and synchronize their e-mail messages. With the latest synchronized Exchange data, they can continue working offline until their next opportunity to dial in and reconnect. Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003 help them to be productive online and offline.

Don't want to carry a portable computer? Pocket PC, Pocket PC Phone Edition, and Windows powered Smartphones enable you to synchronize your wireless device directly to Exchange. E-mail messages, contacts, schedules, and attachments are at your fingertips.

Cost Savings with Exchange 2003

The Exchange 2003 upgrade and administration tools increase your worker productivity and help consolidate your servers to save you money.

Consolidation Scenario

For customers running Exchange 5.5, upgrading presents a great opportunity to simplify operations, increase server availability and reliability, reduce the time it takes to do backup and restores, and reduce the number of servers for Exchange. This leads to lower TCO. Exchange 2003 takes the lead from Exchange 2000 with a multiple database design (up to 20 databases per server). Typical Exchange 5.5 organizations have 1,000–2,000 users per server, limited primarily because of a single database architecture and the time required for backup and restore operations and management. With Exchange 2003, however, the number of supported users and mailboxes can easily be in the 3,000–5,000 range or more, depending upon the user profiles, message traffic patterns, and mailbox size limitations.

Administrative Productivity

Exchange 2003 is designed to help your messaging IT staff to be more productive. Ongoing administration of an Exchange environment represents about 20–25 percent of TCO for Exchange. Typical tasks include backup and restore; new mailbox setup; recovery; moves; implementing new hardware, storage, software, and tools; and applying updates and fixes. New and enhanced tools help your IT staff to do their job more efficiently. For example, an executive might need to recover an old, but very important, e-mail message that was deleted a few months ago. By using the new Recovery Storage Group, an administrator can recover an individual user's mailbox to find the important e-mail message that was previously deleted. Other new administrative features include:

• Move multiple mailboxes in parallel.
• Improved message tracking and Outlook client performance logging.
• Enhanced queue viewer that enables both SMTP and X.400 queues to be seen from the same console.
• New query-based distribution lists that now support dynamic, real-time lookups for members.

In addition, Exchange Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager automates the monitoring of your entire Exchange environment, enabling proactive management and rapid resolution of Exchange issues.

Sample Scenario: Migrating to Exchange 2003 from Exchange 5.5

Schedule your move to Exchange 2003 to match your schedule and budgets. Exchange 2003 can operate on either Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003 and is designed to interoperate with Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2000.

New tools and resources help you migrate from a Windows NT 4.0 and Exchange 5.5 environment to a Windows and Exchange 2003 environment more smoothly, easily, and quickly.

1. Walk through the entire migration process with the prescriptive guidance. Before migration, new tools can be used to receive a full report on the existing Exchange 5.5 topology, including sites, servers, mailboxes, and public folders. Active Directory Migration Tool 2.0 is used to migrate Windows NT account passwords to the new Windows Active Directory environment. Tools can also be used to validate that Active Directory is implemented and working properly and that the Exchange components have been properly installed.
2. To implement Active Directory Connector (ADC), designed so that existing Windows NT 4.0 and Exchange 5.5 directory information can replicate to the new Exchange and Windows environment, the new ADC Wizard helps to ease and automate the setup and connection agreements between the Exchange 5.5 and new Windows and Exchange 2003 organizations.
3. The new mailbox and public folder migration tools enable fast and productive moves of the individual mailboxes to Exchange 2003. You and your IT organization will find that the new resources and tools enable a more productive, quicker, and less disruptive migration.