Ferris Research has a few research clippings on some new Exchange and Outlook features :
Replication of Exchange Email Heats Up
A growing number of companies provide replication for Exchange message stores, such as HDS, EMC, Mimosa, Neverfail, McData, and Cemaphore Systems. This enables companies to provide site failover. Now Microsoft is entering the fray with a "log shipping" solution. ….
Read on : here
Outlook 2007 Spam Control Math Puzzle
There’s a new spam control feature planned for Outlook 2007 that hasn’t received much attention: the math puzzle . When Outlook 2007 tries to submit email to Exchange, Exchange will challenge Outlook with a puzzle, waiting for a correct answer before sending the message. The puzzle is designed to require a significant amount of time to solve — of the order of half a second.
Read on : here
Exchange 2007 Enterprise Server Edition introduces new replication technology called Clustered Continuous Replication (CCR). This combines automatic management of redundancy and application-level data replication for Exchange.
Read on : here
I really think exchange is the best app of msft, in fact it is a killer app (too bad you have to use ad and cant use another directory server with it, i mean this, open this up and you might gain users)
however the puzzle thing is wrong. first of all it is non standard and msft in making its own standards once again (remember netbios 🙂 and it takes the S out of SMTP since it is not Simple.
I dont know why the article says this hasnt been discussed, since in fact it has bee discussed a lot. See for example http://slashdot.org/it/04/03/05/2017202.shtml (2005) and http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/02/2136215 (2004)
Using this kind of CAPTCHA ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha ) for sending mail, assusmes CPU power at the client side. Now I know this fat client thing is the way to go according to MSFT but using local CPU cycles for sending mail, has some huge negative effect as wel..
Disadvatages: old computers can send mail, mailinglists will suffer and will need more CPU’s hence more MSFT licenses, campaign management tools with opt-in wont work and need more cpu’s (hence more msft licenses). and there are better ways of dealing with this as well ( http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/solutions/dns.html )
The idea btw is from MSFT (Cynthia Dwork) in 1992. http://research.microsoft.com/users/dwork/
Sine 90% of the spam I get is send out by stupid ASP scripts not doing EOL checking and Exchange openrelays, IIS proxy and the like, I think MSFT shiping better safer and easier to maintain mail products will help muc more to battle spam…
Bert – I completely agree. I find that most open relays out there are badly configured (that is, out of the box), old Exchange v5.5 or v2000 servers. And I also agree that this emphasis on “fat clients” is not what I see out there in the field – I’m encountering a lot of Citrix theses days (it seems a far cheaper, more reliable way of running windows at the desktop). Of course – CPU intensive “fat” clients wont help a shared environment such as Citrix.
Now – Peter. I recall a discussion we had last year where you said Replication was a bad thing and to rely on groove for that. Since then, of course, Groove was purchased, Ray was anointed the new King, the EU have decided to fine MS 2.5m dollars a day, etc, etc.
Now your suggesting that Exchange 12 (in 2007/2008 timeframe) will finally get replication, so you no longer have to share physical devices over a WAN link in order to enable disaster recovery.
Phew. Good news there. Especially since Exchange never got its JET engine replaced with SQL, and of course the push is for larger and larger “unified” messages to be placed into the same (flaky) message store. A message store, of course, which WHEN it crashes, locks all users of that Exchange server out.
Exchange, as you recall, first came onto the market as Exchange Beta v4.5. Not v1 – as v4.5 was the version number of Lotus Notes at the time. Notes v1 did “replication” in the manner that Exchage 2007 is finally coming out with, and in fact Notes v4.5 came out with “Cluster” replication – an on-line “fast” application cluster/replication topology.
Its a shame that the main competitor to Notes has taken so long to catch up on basic, fundamental security and disaster recovery features. I mean, in the last 8 or so years since Notes v4.5, things have moved on a lot. Okay, Exchange has only started at 5.0, v5.5, 2000, and now 2003.
Of course, we’re waiting more than 3 years for exchange 2007. That must have been fun to explain to “software assurance” customers on a three year cycle…
Notes of course, has point releases every three or four months – most of which have feature updates. Domino is at version 7 now, and by the time Exchange 2007/E12 hits the streets, version 8 will be available.
Why is it that MS have taken so long to catch up with such an established, reliable technology ? Dont you – as an MS pre-sales guy – get completely flamed every time a large customer loses their message store and takes out a chunk of their business ?
I sincerely hope that Exchange does actually start to catch up soon, as its frankly embarassing. Exchange customers, of course, just dont believe that Notes/Domino can do all this stuff, and think that somehow that all users should only have a 50mb mailbox.. Strange to think that down in EHV, some business user has a 249GB one…
Anywise. Glad to see Exchange being invested in again, and here’s hoping the service packs roll out for Exchange 2007 a little more promptly than in the past.
Here’s hoping that this doesnt become another tombstone in Ed Brills “MS Collaboration Graveyard” slide.
—* Bill
@Bert,
Thx for this thorough report on the start / history and discussion on this topic. To be honoust I am not that deep in to this new functionality but will certainly catch up based on your input 😉
@ Bill
Your mixing up part of my comments over the last years ..
Groove has nothing to do with replication or Exchange for that matter. Groove “pre-acquisition” was an ISV that provided offline capability for SharePoint. Microsoft Office Groove 2007 provides just that and more integration with other Office system components such as forms (InfoPath), Presence (LCS), etc.
I can not recall stating replication in general is a bad thing and it made Notes / domino unique for many years maybe and still does in some very distributed environment. The majority of implementations today are for more centralised and replication has a different context and purpose than in “the old days” is my opinion.
No comments on the Jet engine 😉 been there done that …
I agree with you that Exchange does not have a 4 month point release cycle in which new features are added, etc. But you are also wrong in assuming that nothing has happened in the last 3 years : http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/sp2/overview.mspx
Sp2 provided quite some enhancements and unique capability compared to compatitive platforms in area’s such as mobility.
I personally think you don’t have to wqorry about the future of Exchange and it ending up on Ed’s “checkerboard” slide. You’ve seen the UC announcements and latest Gartner report ? The Exchange group now being part of UC combined with the very successful RTC solutions Microsoft has released over the last 3 years is a solid foundation for growth.
Hang on in MS may surprise you yet 😉