Exchange Server 2007 Goes Gold

Microsoft on Thursday released to manufacturing Exchange Server 2007, a product developers say they "bet the company on." According to Exchange team lead Terry Myerson, Microsoft has 120,000 mailboxes running on Exchange 2007, with 200 partners utilizing the software for another 55,000. Acting as a unified messaging server, Exchange 2007 handles e-mail, calendaring, faxes and even voicemail.

"In addition to taking the time to ensure this software was rock solid for you, we've invested more time in documentation and deployment guidance than we have for any other release previously," Myerson said. A lot of work on Exchange 2007 has been focused on administrative tools. The new release has been componentized and administrators can choose to install only the pieces they need. Exchange will also be able to automatically detect and configure end-user systems.