E-mail is perhaps the primary means of electronic communication today, and one of the leading messaging platforms is undoubtedly Microsoft�s Exchange Server.

Since the release of Exchange Server 4.0 at the beginning of 1996, Microsoft has shipped literally millions of Exchange clients in one form or another, seeing it go from nothing to being a major player in the messaging market virtually overnight. Despite the designated version number of 4.0, this version of Exchange was treated as a 1.0 release by many, and criticism was heaped upon it from all directions � lack of scalability, lack of Internet protocols, no real workflow capabilities, and so on.

Microsoft immediately started work on the next release, initially slated as version 4.1. By the time the second Beta became available, it was called 4.5, and once it was released to manufacturing � less than a year after version 4.0 hit the streets � the additional functionality was such that it was granted a whole new version number all its own.

Version 5.0 (released at the beginning of 1997) was indeed a significant upgrade, far more advanced the the point release it was originally intended to be. Chief amongst the new features was the boosting of Interent support. POP3 support appeared, allowing Exchange to host a multitude of Interent mail clients, not restricted to Microsoft�s own. News support (NNTP) also appeared, allowing Exchange to serve as a true NNTP host for corporate NNTP clients as well as communicate with other Internet-based NNTP hosts to replicate newsgroups.

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) and Web integration were other significant additions which allowed remote Web-based clients to access both the Exchange directory and their Exchange mailboxes over the Internet using a standard Web browser. And finally, the Outlook client was upgraded to Outlook 97 and shipped with Exchange server as the preferred client for both Internet and corporate mail.

Less than a year later � at the back end of 1997 � we saw yet another major upgrade in the form of Exchange Server 5.5, the latest version at the time of writing. This saw further improvements to the performance and scalability of Exchange Server, increasing backup performance and removing the limit on the size of the message store. Thanks to the new changes, version 5.5 was capable of servicing 217 per cent more MAPI users and 38 per cent more POP3 users than the previous release.

Once again, there were additions to the Internet support, with the inclusion of a Chat Service, LDAP3 and IMAP4, further expanding Internet functionality and providing support for a wider variety of clients. The inclusion of a single-user version of Visual InterDev and new Outlook forms support provided the means to develop HTML-based Outlook forms and ASP-based applications.

There were a number of useful facilities added for the administrator in version 5.5 too. Multiple address containers could now be used to create "virtual organisations", and server-based scripting support was finally included. These scripts could be used to devlop intelligent applications that processed and routed messages and forms according to rules programmed in the script. A life-saver for many administrators (and users) was included in the form of the new Deleted Item Recovery features, that allowed thr administrator to set "expiry" times for deleted messages. Until that time had expired, deleted messages were kept hidden on the server and were recoverable by end-users through the Outlook client.

Finally, on the security and reliability front, support was also included for S/MIME (Secure MIME) and Microsoft Cluster Server.

What Next?

So, having brought us slap, bang up to date with Exchange Server 5.5, the questions is � where do we go from here?

Although we are all eagerly awaiting Service Pack 1 for Exchange 5.5 to provide (along with the various security patches) message journalling and improved Key Management facilities, most of us are already looking beyond this to the next major release. At the recent European TechEd conference in Nice, Microsoft outlined its plans for the new version of Exchange Server currently in development � code-named "Platinum".

The Exchange Directory Service was introduced with the first release of the product in 1996. It provided multi-master functionality, replication, LDAP support, and so on, and for a while was tipped to be the model for the new NT Directory Service. However, we now know that the Active Directory Service (ADS) will debut with Windows NT 5.0, and Platinum servers and clients will use the Active Directory for universal access to all user and configuration information. This directory integration provides Exchange customers with even greater scalability, enhanced security, and native Internet Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) version 3.0 support, as well as a single point of administration.

The ADS will thus be the single universal repository for all user and resource information, and Platinum will access this repository, providing a consistent data view to the operating system, Exchange, and other applications. Mailboxes, distribution lists and customer recipients, for example, will all be stored as native NT 5.0 objects withing the ADS schema. ADS also provides a much more flexible architecture, enabling user mailboxes to be moved between sites and renamed without adversely affecting Personal Address Books or old mail messages.

The ultimate aim is the Zero Administration for Windows (ZAW) vision, and the integration with ADS provides a step towards this, with a reduction in cost of ownership through the need to maintain only one directory, and full backward compatibility, allowing Platinum sites to replicate seamlessly with previous versions of Exchange Server.

Replication itself will be improved, with per-property replication and enhanced replication topology, and security permissions can also be applied right down to property level. Finally, the schema is fully extensible, providing a wealth of customisation options, as well as the ability to mail-enable any native NT 5.0 directory object. For example, the Windows NT Server object could be mail-enabled and the mail attribute could be set to [email protected]. Users could then send messages directly to the server, to request additional disk space, for example, and the messages would be routed to the server administrator.

With the release of Platinum, as well as with future versions of BackOffice products, there will no longer be a distinction between Exchange sites and SMS sites, only a single definition of a site. When an administrator installs an Exchange server, the server will automatically be inserted into the site where it is physically located, based on its IP address. The Exchange routing engine will use the site to automatically generate an optimized messaging topology, and the Active Directory will use the site topology information for directory replication. The NT Administration programs will provide site manipulation capabilities, enabling administrators to move servers between sites, split sites, or join sites. Luckily, Platinum does not appear to be dependent on Active Directory, which is just as well given the potential delays to the release of NT 5.0. However, Platinum will be designed to migrate quickly and easily to ADS once NT 5.0 has been released.

Having covered one of the biggest changes, what other goodies are we likely to see in the Platinum release?

There will be three ways of managing Platinum installations: via snap-ins to the standard Microsoft Management Console (MMC), via a Web browser interface, or via scripts, enabling a "roll your own" approach to management. The new strategy will also support a wide diversity of management "roles", including:

• Account Managers
: user management, room scheduling, and some troubleshooting
• Content Managers
: creating, deleting, assigning ownership/permissions, and moderating public folders
• System Operators
: start/stop services, reboot servers, backups/restores, apply Service Packs and upgrades, and generate reports
• Architect/Gurus
: topology, capacity planning, deployment planning, etc.

There will also be an event interface on the Information Store and the various protocols, to provide such facilities as global inbound virus checking or outbound signature stamping. The System Attendant will also provide full logging of all objects to an external OLE DB data source, as well as extensive real-time monitoring and alerting. The administrator will thus be able to automate procedures such as archiving a copy of every message sent through the system, checking all inbound messages for viruses, forward notification of meeting changes to a page, and so on.

There will be a common data access with OLE DB, with open interfaces enabling high performance data access to many information sources, including structured relational data repositories such as SQL, Oracle and Access, in addition to semi-strucured data sources such as Exchange itself.

The transacted data store which is at the heart of today�s Exchange Server, will be improved significantly in the Platinum release in order to enhance scalability, availability and flexibility. This will be achieved via various degrees of partitioning to provide multiple levesl of redundancy. Processes will be partitioned acrosss multiple servers, as will the information store itself in order to provide a dual node load-balanced cluster with fail-over capability.

The partitioned storage will provide more flexible storage management and the ability to host multiple virtual organizations, as well as simpler moves and consolidation of servers, and faster recovery after major data loss.

This new architecture will play host to many new system capabilities, including row and column level security within folders, per row calculated columns, column totals, integrated content indexes, query-based replication, and URL-addressable hierarchies, folders, messages, files, body-parts and attachments.

The enhanced services of the Platinum release are designed to allow "virtual teams" to collaborate in interesting new ways, including real-time person to person communication services (chat, instant messaging and NetMeeting conferences), mobile wireless data access, and support for audio and video data formats, text to speech, and command recognition.

Real-time collaboration will be supported by unified messaging capabilities straight out of the box. There will be a unification of storage for media formats � both voice and data � as well as the ability to automate and manage information flow utilizing distributed agents.

Summary

Exchange Server has already come a long way from a simple client-server messaging foundation with version 4.0, to a much more scalable and flexible collaboration tool with release 5.5. Platinum takes this to the next level, offering new degrees of scalability and redundancy, as well as providing a firm platform for the ultimate goal of unified messaging and real-time collaboration

Send mail to webmaster with questions or�
comments about this web site.
Copyright � 1991-2005 The NSS Group Ltd.
All rights reserved.