Microsoft reacts to the Gmail Factor
Microsoft is recommending that that employers increase the size of Exchange mailboxes, as it moves to head off the increasing trend among workers to auto-forward their email to more expansive Gmail accounts.
Other new features in Exchange 2007 also take aim at Gmail’s search and mobile-access features.
Dan Warne at APC Magazine reports 
that,
IT departments have traditionally applied such restrictive limits to Exchange Server mailboxes -as low as 25MB per staff member - that users have become frustrated with repeated “your mailbox is full” errors.
Meanwhile, only senior execs have been granted access to work email from home, or via a Blackberry.
As a result, more and more users are auto-forwarding all their email to Gmail, where they have a 2.7GB mailbox capacity and can access it wherever they are - even via a mobile phone.
Microsoft hopes that larger mailboxes will stem the flood.
It will also offer a search feature 35 times faster than Exchange 2003 and plans to release a mobile-access app for Exchange, code-named “Crossbow”, which will offer remote searching of, and quick access to, Exchange mail.
Not everyone is a lucky as me. The IT Department where I work would rather carve their own hearts out with an Apple Remote than run Exchange. It also provides bottomless mailboxes.
If you are really interested in what the new Exchange 2007 will be like, or if your workplace forces you to use it, you can see some demos of the new features on Microsoft’s web site.
You can also look forward to Microsoft’s promise that,
Exchange Server 2007 was designed from the ground up to enable your IT department to deliver bold new communication capabilities - voice-controlled inboxes, Outlook-based voice mail - without sacrificing productivity or compromising budgets.
[Via APC Magazine ]
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December 22nd, 2006 at 1:16 am
Actually, just as many firms are taking the approach of blocking “Forward-All” rules instead of worrying about increasing mailbox sizes. Forwarding mail outside of the organization is considered a serious security breach by most of the organizations that I work with, so they take steps to prevent it.
Ultimately, in my experience the problem in many organizations stems from people using their work e-mail for excessive personal use. Of course, many companies could stem that tide by taking the opposite approach…. Ensure that access to external webmail services like GMail and Mac.com is NOT restricted, so that at least employees can get some access to their personal mail while at the office, and encourage them to use their personal mail accounts for personal material, rather than cluttering the corporate mail system with it.
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:16 pm
“The IT Department where I work would rather carve their own hearts out with an Apple Remote than run Exchange.”
What do they run instead? Does it work in a multi-office environment? Our IT Department wants to upgrade Exchange and I want them to consider some alternatives. But the alternatives need to work well with offices in several states/countries.
December 22nd, 2006 at 6:59 pm
My work doesn’t use exchange. They’re currently using standad open source server offerings for SMTP/IMAP/POP/Webmail, and this works well but doesn’t really offer a good calendaring solution. They’re now looking at Zimbra (http://www.zimbra.org) which does all those things, but throws calendaring in the mix as well as offering a really cool web front-end for those who don’t want to or can’t use standalone native clients. It also works with Outlook apparently, though we don’t use that on the desktops where I work either…
December 23rd, 2006 at 2:38 am
I’ve been looking at Zimbra for some time as well, as it seems to be the only feasible Mac-friendly collaborative solution other than the monolithic Exchange world.
Zimbra is close, but not fully there yet as they need to implement a few more collaborative features to make it as robust as the mainstream corporate solutions…. Lack of proper delegation/shared folder support is probably the biggest limitation right now, although I do understand that they are working on it.
For smaller businesses and distributed organizations, I’ve also found that Joyent is a pretty good service. It’s entirely web-based for calendaring and address book support at this point (e-mail is available via IMAP, but there’s no Address Book or iCal sync), but it seems to have a good collaborative feel to it as long as you’re content to work almost entirely in a web-based world.
We’re far off-topic here, but for me, a solution that would replace Exchange would have to provide the following collaborative features:
E-Mail, Calendaring, Address Book Support
Ability to sync to the iApps (IMAP mail, Address Book, iCal) for offline access to all information.
Ability to share calendars and address books.
SHARED FOLDER SUPPORT. This is huge, and is a place where a lot of solutions presently fall down. Exchange Public Folders aren’t even a great solution, but are presently the only one really available to a Mac user (GroupWise did this far better, but the GroupWise Mac client is sad and pathetic). The ability to use IMAP for offline sharing of mail folders and have a web-based interface into those folders would be a must.
Basic Document Management (the ability to place free-standing documents into folders to share with other users). Mail.app can attach a document into a message, but there’s presently no way that I’m aware of to just drop a document into a folder directly.
Fully integrated mobile device support (Blackberry et al)
As I mentioned above, I’ve actually preferred the collaborative features of GroupWise in many ways, as it provides the shared folder and document management support that Exchange mostly lacks. Unfortunately, there is zero integration with GroupWise and the Mac world, and the closest thing they have to a client is their cross-platform Java client, which is not only ugly and non-Mac-like, but doesn’t even provide all of the features of it’s Windows counterpart.
Bottom line is that I’d really like to find something that can fully replace the way I use Exchange. I’m presently waiting to see what Zimbra is going to become, as it has a lot of potential, and already addresses many of the points above, but they have to ensure that anything they provide in a web-based world is also available in a synchronized offline equivalent…. I travel with a Powerbook and do not want to be tied to having to link up to the web to retrieve information that I need.
December 24th, 2006 at 8:06 am
@Rich, I’m ashamed to say that I have no idea.
@Jesse, there’s a Zimbra test server now at my work as well, about to replace SquirrelMail as the College’s web interface and to provide a robust calendaring solution. I’ve been playing around on it, and like the look and feel of it too.
December 24th, 2006 at 10:03 am
@Tim: I will be very interested in seeing some posts on what you think of Zimbra, particularly in relation to it’s integration with Mail.app et al. I’m certainly no fan of Exchange at all, but it’s the best I’ve been able to get so far for cross-platform collaboration. As the primary decision maker in my organization, I’d like nothing more than to switch us to a more open-source platform, if it can deliver the requirements that we need.
I know that there have been some murmurings as well about having Joyent integrate an API interface for Mailtags, which looks like an incredible idea, but again Joyent supports no offline synchronization of anything but mail itself (courtesy of IMAP, of course).