Exchange 2010 Target? Google Gmail et al…

Bill Pray has a positive assessment of Microsoft Exchange 2010. Exchange 2010 is the most rock-solid Email and Calendaring solution for bith on-premise as well as Online scenario. I believe the recently released beta is very well received.

… As the Microsoft marketing machine cranks up the information on Exchange 2010, it is interesting to note how many articles are devoted to new productivity capabilities for users. However, user productivity is not what Exchange 2010 is about… Exchange 2010 is about Microsoft competing with Google and anyone else who throws their hat into the ring – Cisco? IBM? Yahoo!? – in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) e-mail market. While there is no question that Google still has a limited presence in enterprise e-mail, Gmail continues to garner fans and install base in the small and medium business market. Microsoft is no stranger to that strategy and must respond by providing a better enterprise SaaS e-mail solution or risk losing future market share.

Microsoft has not made it a secret that Exchange 2010 is intended to become Microsoft’s attack on the SaaS e-mail market, but the Microsoft marketing machine sometimes obscures things in an effort to get messaging to various audiences. However, the press announcement states in the second sentence: “Exchange 2010 is part of the next wave of Microsoft Office-related products and is the first server in a new generation of Microsoft server technology built from the ground up to work on-premises and as an online service.” …

… Obviously, many of these features are good for an on-premise implementation also. However, when you start perusing the feature list for Exchange 2010, it is clear that Microsoft is executing on a strategy to make Exchange SaaS friendly. The story line for Exchange 2010 is not about enhancements in productivity features for the enterprise, it is about Microsoft taking Exchange to cloud. …

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