From the Test Center: Now, I’ve never actually been to a Hawaiian wedding myself, but I do know a few people who have — and none of them mentioned anything about Microsoft, OCS, Exchange or any technology for that matter. Until Brian Chee and Oliver Rist examined the union of Office Communications Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007, that is, in Chee’s Lab in Hawaii. “Overall, our upbeat view of Exchange Server 2007 hasn’t changed since we examined Beta 2 back in August of 2006.” Microsoft’s marriage of easy communications. Like all spousal pacts, this one has its share of confusion about who brings what and, of course, there’s some overlap. And as with most newlyweds there are positives, negatives and great potential. Related: Gates continues talking about what’s needed in unified communications. Platforms: Apple will release Leopard nine days from now. Mimicking its 6 p.m. sale time for the iPhone, the long-delayed and highly-anticipated OS will become available the evening of October 26. “Apple boasts 300 new features in its Leopard client OS, and 250 new features in its server operating environment,” Tom Yager reports in this Enterprise Mac post. Yager shares the high points, or nine of them at least, beginning with a redesigned desktop, as well as upgrade plans and pricing. Open source: Novell pulled NetWare back to the present when it released Open Enterprise Server 2, opines Brad Shimmin. There just might be more to this story, though. “Obviously there are many strange coincidences surrounding the Novell (and now Red Hat) lawsuit filed by IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corporation, some of which point to Novell as a possible accomplice in a larger Microsoft conspiracy to bring down Red Hat specifically and Linux in general,” Shimmin explains. Future-proofing NetWare with virtualization. All that aside, Shimmin goes on to call OES 2 “a huge deal for the plethora of Novell shops with intractable NetWare Loadable Modules and nervous programmers.” Software Development