While waiting for Longhorn, the new Exchange 2003 is well worth a look

“A long way to Longhorn.” Should we call it Latehorn?

Why are all my fellow pundits suddenly so concerned with whether or not Microsoft can deliver its next-generation client on schedule? Of course it can’t. That’s part of the ongoing charm of Microsoft. “Delivery by 2006” means late 2006 to mid-2007. We know it. Microsoft knows it. What’s the problem?

Taking a closer look at what Microsoft has already delivered is far more interesting. I’ve been using Office 2003 for a while now, and overall, it’s an agreeable upgrade — but then again, I didn’t shell out any bucks for the upgrade. Running Exchange 2003 RTM (release to manufacturing), on the other hand, made more of an impression, though I will say that Outlook 2003’s embedded spam killer, speedier auto-complete and its blocking of HTML messages (unless you click on the message body) all combined to make a noticeable difference.

Exchange 2003 is a big-time change right from the get-go; no hemming and hawing here. If anything leaped out at me right away, it’s this version’s noticeably easier management. Either that or I’m getting smarter, although your kind reader e-mails assure me that can’t possibly be the case. On the downside, you’re best off upgrading if you’re already running Exchange 2000. Those folks who decided to hang on to their existing Exchange 5.5 installation another year are in for a rougher ride. That said, however, it’s nothing that can’t be overcome with enough planning and a stern attention to backups.

For those interested in detail, Exchange 2003 management is far easier from my stunted perspective, largely due to the Exchange System Manager. This guy snaps into the Microsoft Management Console, and it has received a few improvements that make day-to-day Exchange management a heck of a lot more intuitive. Overall interface navigation is quicker, and the fact that you can view your message queues by server instead of having to cull that information out another way simply makes more sense.

But Microsoft being Microsoft, it can’t just give you a product drenched in new features. At least some of those new features have to drag you toward other Microsoft products, or else the product manager disappears one night on the way home from work. In Exchange 2003’s case, Microsoft is very interested in having its customers upgrade to Windows 2003 Server and Office 2003. 2003 Server gets its hook in large Exchange installations where clustering is an issue: Eight-way Exchange 2003 clusters require Windows 2003 Server. And if you want to centralize an anti-spam policy to support centrally-monitored junk e-mail folders, you’ll need Outlook 2003. I hear some new schedule-sharing and collaboration features are going to need both Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003, but I haven’t played in that sandbox yet, so I can’t be more specific.

Another tug by both Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003 to get the buyers of one to spring for the other is granular performance monitoring. I like the new performance monitor counters resident in both Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003, and honestly, I doubt they would have been possible without support from both server and client. These puppies will really help not only with monitoring client activity, but also with baselining client performance. On the client side, Outlook 2003 installs 13 counters if you check out the new Performance object. Exchange mirrors these with similar counters; both sides mostly utilizing an average of failed versus successful RPCs to come up with their results.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of Exchange 2003’s improvements in these few paragraphs. Exchange 2003 may not be a revolutionary upgrade, but it’s definitely weightier than simply an incremental upgrade. An Exchange administrator wouldn’t be wasting his or her time giving this one some careful consideration.