Let's Talk About Exchange 2010

Posted on February 25, 2010 by Info-Tech

Are you one of the majority who is still using Exchange 2003? In spite of major improvements, most of our clients report that Exchange 2003 is still good enough. There is still considerable pressure to upgrade – both internally, aand externally. And with Microsoft’s history of releasing upgrades twice as fast as companies need, you may find yourself upgrading earlier than warranted.

Making the case to upgrade to Exchange 2010 can be complicated (see also “What’s New in Exchange 2010“). To offer some perspective, here are some key points from our most recent e-mail platform research:

• 89% of all organizations are planning on-premise deployments when upgrading, despite the on-demand and hosted options. The capability exists to have a hybrid deployment which allows users to connect to on-premise servers on the corporate network and an on-demand solution when travelling.
• Support for Exchange 2003 ended in April 2009, and Microsoft’s partners no longer develop add-ons that support Exchange 2003.
• Emerging alternative delivery options such as SaaS are game-changers in the e-mail market and can be key upgrade factors.

Our research also indicated that 69% of organizations running Exchange 2007 are planning to upgrade to
Exchange 2010, which we do not recommend. To find out what to watch for when upgrading to Exchange 2010 and why transitioning to Exchange 2007 should not be on the agenda, check out the following ITA Premium research notes: “Exchange 2010: Transitioning from Exchange 2007” and “Infrastructure Impact of Exchange 2010”.

The additional features and advantages provided by Exchange 2010 can be extremely persuasive. As one of our clients in the non-profit sector told us: “We were extremely close to going with Google Apps. Exchange 2010
kept us by allowing us to remove our existing voicemail box and combining voice and e-mail services
together.”

Editor’s Note: The complete results of our research and the tools to help you decide to upgrade are
published in the solution set “Decide if I should Upgrade my E-mail Platform: Rock the Enterprise E-Mail
Boat with Care“.

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