Exchange 2010 enhances productivity across enterprises

ROI today has to be shown across the entire organization. Fortunately, when it comes to Exchange 2010 that discussion is an easy one.

Productivity rules
How many times have you opened your email to see 10+ items with the same subject line? With Conversation Threading in Exchange 2010 you can now collapse the entire thread to the most recent item. And MailTIPS is a great feature that warns you under certain conditions - such as "reply all" to a large distribution list.

As well, Speech to Text functionality automatically converts your Exchange Unified Messaging voicemails. Exchange can even send Text message notification to your cellular phone with the speech to text content of the voice mail preview in the SMS message.

Exchange 2010 also lets you take control of how people find you with And Call Answering Rules. Call Answering Rules present callers with custom greetings, Find-Me, and call transfer options, in addition to leaving a voice mail. These rules can be preceded by conditions. You give out only one number to clients, and you control where it rings.

And Personal Archives now allow you to place your PST files and older emails into a folder area that gets backed up on the server along with having it for local access when you need it.

Compliance and security get easier
For our Compliance and Security minded IT staff, Exchange 2010 adds new features that were in the past reserved for third-party paid add-ins and complex configurations.

Multi-Mailbox Search enables searching of mailbox items, including e-mail, attachments, calendar items, tasks and contacts. There is also the Legal Hold feature, which allows for immediate preservation of a user's deleted and edited mailbox items.

Retention policies can be set to specific items or folders in a mailbox. Policies are configured within Exchange and are displayed inside each e-mail, along with a header stating the applied policy and delete date. Dynamic Signatures IT can automatically apply a signature to the bottom of an e-mail, and Expanded Transport Rules Conditions allow you to block e-mail based on more granular conditions.

And Exchange Server Database Availability Groups provide automatic failover at the database level, without the complexity of traditional clustering.

But how?
If you own Software Assurance benefits within your Enterprise or Select Agreement then you are already entitled to upgrade to Exchange 2010. You should also check your Microsoft software agreements for unused SA benefits which could be used for Exchange Deployment and Planning Services (EDPS).

Exchange 2010 is also about choices: you can build the new solution on premise or chose to leverage Microsoft's Online Services (www.micrsoft.com/online). You pay for what you use each month. There is no loss in functionality either way.

Not sure where to start? Programs such as EDPS and the LegendCorp E10 QuickStart Program provide prescriptive and predictable guidance through the process. With such an array of new productivity and business-driven features, why not start your Exchange 2010 planning today?

Andy Papadopoulos can be contacted at andy@legendcorp.com