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Microsoft Exchange Server

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Introduction

For most businesses today, e-mail is the mission-critical communications tool that allows their people to produce the best results. This greater reliance on e-mail has increased the number of messages sent and received, the variety of work getting done, and even the speed of business itself. Amid this change, employee expectations have also evolved. Today, employees look for rich, efficient access—to e-mail, calendars, attachments, contacts, and more—no matter where they are or what type of device they are using. For IT professionals, delivering a messaging system that addresses these needs must be balanced against other requirements such as security and cost. Enterprise security requirements have become more complex as the demand and use for e-mail has increased. Today, IT departments must contend with e-mail security threats that are wide ranging: continually evolving spam and viruses, noncompliance risks, the vulnerability of e-mail to interception and tampering, in addition to the potential harmful effects of natural and man-made disasters. While security is clearly a priority, IT is ever cognizant of the need to manage cost. Time, money, and resource constraints are a fact of life as IT is made accountable to do more with less. As a result, IT professionals look for a messaging system that addresses both enterprise and employee needs while also being cost-effective to deploy and manage. Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 has been designed specifically to meet these challenges and address the needs of the different groups who have a stake in the messaging system. The new capabilities of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 deliver the advanced protection your company demands, the anywhere access your people want, and the operational efficiency you, in IT, need.

Built-in Protection

Exchange Server 2007 offers built-in protective technologies to keep your business moving, reduce spam and viruses, enable confidential communications, and help your company to be compliant.

Anywhere Access

With Exchange Server 2007, employees get anywhere access* to their e-mail, voice mail, calendars, and contacts from a variety of clients and devices.

Operational Efficiency

Exchange Server 2007 enables new levels of operational efficiency through capabilities that optimize hardware and networking investments and features that help make administrators more productive.

The Outlook Experience

In addition to benefits and capabilities described above, Exchange Server 2007 offers the best integration with the broadest range of clients. Exchange Server supports a complete Outlook experience, from Outlook on the desktop to Outlook Web Access, Outlook Mobile, and the new Outlook Voice Access, a feature of Exchange Unified Messaging. Exchange Server also integrates with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and other Office applications as well as third-party systems and devices.

Access Anywhere

Microsoft Exchange Server

Secure by design, secure by default

High standards of security are available with both Exchange Server 2003/2007 and Windows Server 2003, in keeping with the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing initiative. Exchange protects both your messaging environment and your privacy.

  1. Distribution lists restricted to authenticated users. You can allow only sending from authenticated users or specify which users can or cannot send mail to specified distribution lists.
  2. Support of real-time Safe and Block lists. Reduce the amount of unsolicited mail delivered to your organisation with connection filtering.
  3. Inbound recipient filtering. Reduce unsolicited email messages by filtering inbound messages based on the recipient. Messages that are addressed to users that are not found, or to whom the sender does not have the permissions to send are rejected. This applies only to messages sent by anonymously authenticated users.
  4. Kerberos authentication between a front-end and back-end server. To help ensure that credentials are secure, Exchange 2003/2007 uses Kerberos delegation when sending user credentials between a front-end server, such as Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access or Outlook Mobile Access and a back-end server such as the mailbox store.
  5. Privacy protection in Outlook and Outlook Web Access. By default, content from outside your network is blocked in Outlook 2003/2007 and Outlook Web Access. This feature helps prevent spammers from identifying valid email addresses through links to external content. You can, however, override this feature to view external content.
  6. Virus Scanning API 2.5. Third-party antivirus products can run on servers running Exchange 2003/2007 that do not have resident Exchange mailboxes and are allowed to delete and send messages to the sender.
  7. Antispam integration with Outlook 2003/2007 and Outlook Web Access. You can upload the Safe and Block Senders List to Exchange 2003/2007 for filtering.
  8. Clustering security. Exchange 2003/2007 clustering supports Kerberos authentication against an Exchange virtual server. Exchange 2003/2007 also supports Internet Protocol security (IPSec) between front-end servers and clustered back-end servers running Exchange.
  9. Administrative permissions. Cross-forest support and the ability to administer both Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 helps organisations that have segmented the administration of their Microsoft Windows®-based environment and Exchange environment into two unique groups and are concerned about security.
  10. Restricted relaying. You can restrict relaying to a limited number of security principles through the standard Windows 2000 discretionary access control list (DACL). The ability to grant relaying to an IP address is still present.
  11. Restricted submissions. You can restrict submissions to a limited number of security principles through the standard Windows 2000 DACL. This feature helps prevent blocked senders from sending to internal-only distribution lists by spoofing, which is the practice of tricking users into providing passwords and other information to allow unauthorized access into a system.
  12. Public folder permissions for unknown users. Folders with distinguished names in access control lists that cannot be resolved to security identifiers drop the unresolvable distinguished names.
  13. Public folder store replication. Public folder servers replicate with local servers for updates even if the local servers do not have the full set of replication content that they need. You can use a registry key to identify the first server that is used for backfilling.

Top 10 Reasons to Upgrade to Exchange 2007

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is designed to deliver increased protection for your business and give anywhere access for your employees, while being operationally efficient to deploy, manage and maintain. Should you upgrade? Here are ten reasons for you to consider. For more information, peruse the detailed features listing and compare features across versions to help you discover all that Exchange Server 2007 has to offer.

1. Keep your e-mail system running at lower cost
New data replication capabilities in Exchange Server 2007 drive increased availability at a lower cost. Local Continuous Replication delivers database redundancy with rapid recovery, minimizing the frequency of full tape backups. With Cluster Continuous Replication in combination with Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS), active/passive clusters provide both database and service redundancy without requiring expensive shared storage, even when clusters span geographic locations.
2. Access e-mail, voice mail, calendar, and contacts from virtually anywhere, anytime
In Exchange Server 2007, your employees can access their important inbox information from virtually anywhere using their desktop computer, laptop computer, a browser window from any Internet-connected computer, their mobile device, and even using a basic telephone when no Internet connectivity is available. Employees enjoy a rich and familiar experience based on Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 functionality. Best of all, it’s all built in with centralized management and robust security, making rich anywhere access possible for your entire workforce instead of just a limited few.
3. Get affordable, enterprise-class mobile messaging that’s better than ever
Exchange makes enterprise-class mobile messaging a reality by offering industry-leading scalability, native integration with compatible devices for lower total cost of ownership, and by providing a variety of device options to suit today’s business needs. Building on the advances in Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2, mobility features in Exchange Server 2007 raise the bar on user experience and deliver improved manageability. Now desktop features such as support for rich HTML, quick flags, sophisticated calendaring, and fast search are available on mobile devices. In addition, Exchange Server 2007 provides more granular security policies and enables users to perform basic tasks on their own (such as perform a remote wipe from Outlook Web Access 2007).
4. Empower employees with unified messaging while saving money
With new unified messaging in Exchange Server 2007, employees can receive their e-mail, voice mail, and faxes through a single inbox that can be accessed from anywhere. Employees can manage all of their messages in one place just as they manage e-mail today. For example, voice mail can be forwarded, or if the recipient adds text notes to the voice mail, messages can be found using built-in search. With Exchange Server 2007, you can deliver these features while lowering cost and complexity through consolidation of your voice mail infrastructure.
5. Get comprehensive protection from spam, viruses and phishing attacks
Exchange Server 2007 provides integrated antivirus, anti-spam and anti-phishing technologies to stop the latest threats before they impact your business and employees. Multi-pronged message filtering in the perimeter network is available through the Edge Transport server role. For customers who prefer to use a service, similar capabilities are provided in the “cloud” (as an Internet-based service) through Exchange Hosted Filtering*. Additionally, Forefront for Exchange Server* protects Exchange servers from viruses and worms by utilizing multiple antivirus engines simultaneously. To protect from evolving threats, filters are kept up to date with frequent and automatic updates.

*Exchange Hosted Filtering and Forefront Security for Exchange Server are included with the Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise CAL license.
6. Reduce compliance risk in a way that makes sense for your business
Exchange Server 2007 incorporates features specifically designed to help your business comply with corporate, regulatory, and legal requirements. These features enable you to apply retention rules, scan and act on messages in transport, flexibly journal, and perform rich text searches across mailboxes in your organization. Exchange Server 2007 eases the toll often placed on administrators charged with applying and enforcing compliance policies, while avoiding adverse impact on employees and their productivity.
7. Take advantage of powerful Web access
Outlook Web Access (OWA) 2007 provides a rich, Outlook 2007-like experience in a browser and is great for use at home, at an airport kiosk, at an internet café, at a friend’s house, or anywhere where there is an Internet connection available. No VPN or network tunnel is required. OWA enhancements in 2007 include a new Scheduling Assistant to help employees efficiently book meetings, fast server-side search, integrated unified messaging as well as new features to access documents and attachments more easily from outside the office. With two-factor authentication support and attachment viewing in HTML format, OWA also offers enhanced security compared with previous versions. The Link below is to an external site, we accept no responsibility to the content.

• See a detailed demonstration on the new and improved Outlook Web Access
8. Boost administrator productivity with new tools
Exchange Server 2007 helps administrators save time and reduce effort with advanced management tools. A new command line interface gives administrators complete, fine-grained control over Exchange objects as well as the power to easily automate all types of operations with scripts. In addition, the graphical management console has been completely updated, with a more intuitive user interface, improved discoverability and a toolbox work center that integrates diagnostics, monitoring, and troubleshooting tools including the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer and the Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant.
9. Ease deployment and management
Deploying Exchange Server has never been easier. Exchange Server 2007 has a modern, modular architecture based on server roles. The server role concept is integrated into setup and deployment, helping to eliminate potential errors resulting from manual configuration, reducing the surface area for malicious attacks, and simplifying day-to-day management. Server roles are not tied to particular hardware configurations; they can be deployed on one server machine or many**. The new Autodiscover feature further eases deployment – by creating an automatic connection between Exchange Server and Outlook 2007 clients where no special scripts or complex user intervention is required.

**The exception is the Edge Transport role that is intentionally designed to reside by itself in the perimeter network.
10. Optimize your investment for future growth
As a native 64-bit application, Exchange Server 2007 breaks through past memory and cache limitations for higher performance and increased scalability even as mailboxes sizes grow to accommodate employees’ demands for more storage. The resulting reduction in input/output (I/O) increases storage utilization so you can optimize existing storage investments or consider lower cost storage options.

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