November 2nd, 2009

Microsoft chops prices of its hosted enterprise cloud offerings

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 3:28 pm

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Exchange Server, Office, Office Live, Resellers, SharePoint Server, Speech, Systems integrators, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Web conferencing

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Office, Cloud Computing, Tools & Techniques, Office Suites, Software, Management, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft is cutting prices of its Microsoft-hosted Exchange, as well as its suite of business services (known as the Business Productivity Online Suite, or BPOS), and is refunding the difference to existing hosting customers.

Microsoft is cutting its Exchange Online pricing from $10 per user per month to $5 per user per month. It also is cutting the price of the BPOS bundle — which includes SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Communications Online and Live Meeting — from $15 per user per month, to $10 per user per month.

Microsoft is leaving the pricing for its Deskless Worker versions of its hosted Online offerings the same. Exchange Online Deskless Worker and SharePoint Online Deskless Worker remain $2 per user per month. The bundle of the two Deskless Worker offerings stays at $3 per user per month.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft officials didn’t attribute the price cut to competition from Google Apps or other hosted offerings. Instead, they attributed the cuts to “rapid customer adoption, global scale and improved efficiencies from new software such as Exchange Server 2010″ (according to the press release).

Microsoft is making BPOs available in 15 new countries before the end of the year. Later this week, BPOS will be commercially available in Singapore; trials are slated to begin in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania and Taiwan. Commercial availability in India is also expected later this year, officials said.

Microsoft officials are now claiming to have more than 1 million paying users for Microsoft’s Online family of services (not counting Live Meeting, for which there are many more paying customers, according to company officials). Newly signed BPOS customers include Hofstra University, Lions Gate Entertainment, McDonald’s Corporation, Rexel Group, Swedish Red Cross and Tyco Flow Control.

Microsoft will be adding a paid, Microsoft-hosted version of Office Web Apps — the Webified versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote– to its Online stable next year. Company officials have said that paid offering will also be available to Microsoft volume-license customers so that they can host Office Web Apps themselves, on-premises, instead of or in addition to allowing Microsoft to host it for them. There will be additional (and, as yet, still unannounce) features that will be part of the paid Office Web Apps offering that aren’t part of the free, ad-funded version.

Microsoft is currently rolling out refreshes to its Online family of services every 90 days or so, according to Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Online. Some of the new features the company is rolling out to its on-premises software — such as Exchange 2010 — are debuting in the hosted, Online offerings before they are available to customers as server-based products. (The final Exchange 2010 software bits are slated to go to customers starting next week.)

I’m sure Microsoft customers will be upbeat about the price cuts for Microsoft’s hosted offerings. But I’d think Redmond’s partners who are trying to make money from selling Microsoft’s hosted services (if not their own hosted version of Microsoft’s wares) might be less enthusiastic…

October 19th, 2009

Microsoft says 'steady progress' continues in Sidekick data recovery

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:18 am

Categories: Azure, Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), OEMs, Speech, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Windows Mobile

Tags: Team, Data Recovery, Microsoft Corp., Team Management, Manufacturing, Management, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft officials promised last week to provide an update this weekend on its ongoing attempt to recover the customer data and information lost during its ongoing Sidekick outage. On October 18, the company provided that update, which didn’t contain much new information.

The Microsoft/Danger team apologized for the amount of time they are taking to restore contacts, photos, e-mail and other Sidekick services to which users lost access at the start of the month. The team said they were taking their time “to make sure we are doing everything possible to maintain the integrity of your data.”

The team still is not committing to an exact recovery timetable, but is saying restoration should begin this week. From the October 18 update:

“We continue to make steady progress, and we hope to be able to begin restoring personal contacts for affected users this week, with the remainder of the content (photographs, notes, to-do-lists, marketplace data, and high scores) shortly thereafter.”

After telling users that they likely had lost all of their personal data, the Microsoft/Danger team then said they expected to be able to recover some of their data. Mid-weeklast week, they said they expected to recover “most if not all” of the missing user data.

Microsoft officials still have not provided many details about what caused the outage, other than to say it was a core system failure. The failure is unrelated to Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and/or Microsoft’s Azure datacenters, as the company has continued to run the Sidekick back-end on the same infrastructure it has been running on before Microsoft acquired the company in 2008.

A number of members of the Sidekick team Microsoft acquired have been working on Microsoft’s Pink premium mobile services and phones for the past year.

October 15th, 2009

Microsoft adds POP e-mail, better Mac support to its hosted business applications

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:13 am

Categories: Azure, Corporate strategy, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Speech, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Web conferencing

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Business Application, Microsoft Corp., E-mail, Desktops, Hardware, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft is rolling out a number of new feature additions to its Microsoft-hosted family of “Online” services, including POP e-mail compatibility and better support for Mac clients.

Microsoft’s Online family currently includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Communications Online, Live Meeting and the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). All of these services are hosted by Microsoft (but not currently running on its Azure cloud operating system).

Microsoft is in the midst of rolling out the October update of Microsoft Online Services. The rollout should be complete and available to all Microsoft Online customers by the end of October, according to an October 14 blog post on the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog.

With the October Service Update, Exchange Online users get support for POP-based clients. Previously, Exchange Online supported only Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and 2007, the Online Services blog post acknowledged.

This month’s update also includes “several enhancements that will provide a more efficient communication and collaboration experience for organizations with Mac users,” according to the post. These include a new single sign-in client for Mac OS users running Safari and the auto-configuration of Office for Mac applications. The update also adds support for Entourage 2008 Exchange Web Services (Microsoft’s stop-gap solution until it replaces Entourage with Outlook in next year’s Office for Mac release); Global Address List support for Entourage 2004 and 2008; SharePoint Online support for Document Connection for Mac; and improved Firefox and Safari support for “My Company Portal.”

Microsoft is making the sign-in client for Mac available for download from the Microsoft Download Center in early November, officials said.

Other new features in the October Online Services rollup:

• The addition of PowerShell commandlets to enable bulk activation of users
• A new version of the Microsoft Online Services Transporter Tool supporting these commandlets
• Online Services Administration Center adds support for up to 30,000 users (up from the previous 10,000 limit)

October 15th, 2009

Microsoft recovers 'most, if not all' Sidekick users' data

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 4:26 am

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Speech, Telecommunications, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Channel Management, Storage Area Networks (SAN), Storage, Marketing, Hardware, Mary Jo Foley

On October 15, Microsoft reversed itself, claiming now that instead of losing all of the personal data of Sidekick users, it has recovered “most, if not all” of it.

(Over the past few days, Microsoft has moved from saying all data was lost, to some, to possibly none.)

From a note on the company’s Web site signed by Roz Ho, the Corporate Vice President of Premium Mobile Experiences:

“We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.”

Microsoft isn’t explaining beyond that what went wrong, starting in early October, that knocked out the hundreds of thousands of Sidekick users. There’s been lots of speculation, ranging from sabotage, to an attempt by Microsoft to move Sidekick’s back-end infrastructure from its current platform to a Windows-based one. (Danger, which Microsoft acquired in 2008, is still running the back-end infrastructure for the Sidekick.)

One of my Microsoft sources told me

“(T)he data loss issue was caused by a hardware update on the existing Danger service that had NOT been ported over to a Microsoft platform and the issue was NOT part of a transition to an MS back end. It was an Oracle dB and Sun SAN solution that got a bad firmware update and the backup failed.”

Since then, I’ve heard from others that this scenario seems likely and that yes, Hitachi Data Systems was the company actually doing the maintenance/update for Microsoft. I’ve also heard that foul play has not been ruled out because the failure was so catastrophic and seemingly deliberate. Microsoft is supposedly continuing to do a full investigation.

Microsoft officials are declining to comment beyond the statement they posted to the Web on October 15. They are promising another update on the situation by this Saturday at the latest.

Meanwhile, lawsuits are beginning to pile up as a result of the Sidekick outage, though a full restoration of data may take the bite out of some of them, I’d think.

October 13th, 2009

Sidekick outage says more about the future of 'Pink' than Microsoft's cloud

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:48 am

Categories: Azure, Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), OEMs, Speech, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Corp., Outage, Pink, Sidekick, Manufacturing, Mary Jo Foley

I was (trying to) unplug most of the long holiday weekend, but couldn’t help but read all the headlines about how the Sidekick outage spells trouble for Microsoft’s cloud strategy.

I’m not downplaying in the least how serious this outage is or letting Microsoft’s Danger subsidiary  — and/or any other companies involved in the loss of users’ data — off the hook. (The latest: The Danger team is now saying that “some” user data might be recoverable, after all.)

But Sidekicks aren’t running from/on “the Microsoft cloud.” In fact, there is no such thing as a single Microsoft cloud. Microsoft has lots of different remote servers in different data centers running lots of different services.

The Microsoft Azure cloud is what many Microsoft watchers think of these days when someone says “the Microsoft cloud.” But the Azure environment provides the underpinning for very few Microsoft services so far. The Sidekick services don’t run on Azure. Microsoft’s My Phone doesn’t run on Azure. Hotmail, Xbox Live,  Microsoft-hosted Exchange — nope, nope and nope. None of these are running on Azure yet.

The Sidekick outage, to me, says more about Microsoft’s Pink than it does about Azure.

The Danger team, which Microsoft acquired in 2008, is largely responsible for the Pink “premium mobile experience” (PMX) software/services on which Microsoft has been working on secretly. There have been a few recent reports that Microsoft has decided against launching the Pink phone(s) that were going to run these services, but I haven’t heard from any of my sources whether this is true. Sharp supposedly is the manufacturer of the Microsoft-branded/co-branded Pink phones, which Microsoft is said to be planning to market primarily to teens and 20-somethings.

(Microsoft officials have denied repeatedly assertions that Microsoft is making its own smartphone. They have not denied that Microsoft is working with a hardware partner to build Microsoft-branded or co-branded phones.)

What was Microsoft doing to the back-end Danger services that resulted in such a catastrophic outage? Microsoft isn’t talking. There are rumors the problem stemmed from a storage-area-networking debacle but Microsoft isn’t confirming that, either.

The services at the core of Danger’s current offering — contact management, calendaring, instant messaging, e-mail — are all running on a back-end platform that Danger doesn’t describe publicly. Here’s the platform diagram it does provide (click on it to enlarge):

Because Microsoft hasn’t yet launched Pink, company officials have refused to talk at all about which premium services it will encompass and what kind of back-end platform they’ll run on. Is Microsoft designing the Pink services to run on its own servers? Is/was Microsoft intending to allow the Pink services to remain hosted on the existing Danger back-end? Did this past week’s Sidekick outage result from Microsoft (or Hitachi Data Services, or whoever) attempting to move the Danger back-end off the existing servers and onto Microsoft’s own servers? Microsoft officials won’t say.

Now that more everyday users know that Sidekick is connected to Danger and Danger to Microsoft, this week’s outage will cast a shadow over any kind of Pink phone and/or Pink premium services launch Microsoft may be planning.

September 11th, 2009

Microsoft: Windows Mobile 7 not on the PDC docket

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 2:25 pm

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Network service providers, OEMs, PDC 2009, Resellers, Speech, Telecommunications, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Windows Mobile, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Mobile Operating Systems, Operating Systems, Mobile Applications, Handhelds, Wireless And Mobility, Software, Hardware

I (and others) have been wondering and speculating whether Microsoft might be holding its Windows Mobile 7 cards close to the vest and be planning to show, or at least talk about, Windows Mobile 7 at this year’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in mid-November.

The answer is no, a company spokeswoman definitively told me on September 11. If Microsoft does talk mobile at its developer conference, Windows Mobile 6.5 — and not even the rumored interim 6.5 update designed to get Win Mobile working on capacative touch screen devices– is the only content on the docket.

Here is the e-mail from the spokesperson:

“As I’m sure you know, Microsoft and its partners are squarely focused on introducing the Windows phone brand through the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 in October [October 6], which includes working closely with ISVs and developers to add even greater value to the Windows Mobile platform and new business opportunities for its mobile channel ecosystem. To properly set your expectations, wanted to let you know that Microsoft is not planning any sessions for PDC that look past the Windows Mobile OS in market at that time.”

I followed up and asked whether Microsoft might be privately showing anything post Win Mobile 6.5, or maybe talking/showing new bits in the keynotes or hallways at the conference, which kicks off November 16. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Windows Mobile 7.0 was still expected to go to phone makers in November 2009 and show up on phones in the first part of 2010….

The answer came back again as no. The spokesperson reiterated that Microsoft would not be doing anything related to Windows Mobile 7 at the PDC.

I guess this could mean one of two things:

• Windows Mobile 7 really isn’t going to debut before the end of 2010, after all. If Windows Mobile 7 phones were coming out in the first part of 2010, as originally expected, wouldn’t Microsoft be working now with developers to help them write apps for the new mobile-phone operating system?
• Microsoft is not planning to use the PDC to communicate with the Win Mobile developer community but could be holding some other public/private conference where it will share more on Win Mobile 7.

What will be on the PDC 2009 docket? So far, there are sessions for those interested in/working with Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, .Net 4.0, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010 and Windows 7. Those are the primary topics planned for the PDC, which is slated from November 16 to 19 in Los Angeles.

There were a couple of other interesting Windows Mobile tidbits this week. Long Zheng over on istartedsomething.com got Microsoft officials to acknowledge that the company is attempting to speed up the delivery of new Windows Mobile releases by working toward allowing updates to be downloaded directly to users’ phones (some time in the future), rather than requiring OEMs to preload the new bits.

And IT Pro UK managed to get Microsoft to confirm what I had heard months ago: That the Mobile team’s plan is to work more closely with fewer handset makers by providing them with chassis specs to which they can build. One such chassis spec: The Windows Mobile 7 one that a source provided me a few months back.

September 9th, 2009

I don't want an MP3 player/camera/ebook reader/gaming device. Do you?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 2:27 pm

Categories: Advertising, Apple, Corporate strategy, Gaming, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Speech, Telecommunications, VOIP, Windows Mobile, Xbox, Zune

Tags: Phone, MP3 Player, Microsoft Zune, MP3, Camera, Media Players, Digital Music, Digital Media, Telecom & Utilities, Consumer Electronics

Common wisdom says we’re hurtling toward a world where a single portable device will be all you need to handle a wide variety of consumerish tasks.

But the further we approach that end goal, the less I want to end up there. Today’s Apple music announcements reminded me of that fact.

I am not an iPod/iPhone/iMac user. I have a Sony Walkman MP3 player, an LG (non Windows Mobile) phone and a Windows PC. I also have an Amazon Kindle and a Panasonic camera. I carry a big bag which usually contains at least two or three of these devices at any given time.

I’m willing to cart all this stuff around because I want my phone to be a good phone. I don’t care if it can browse the Web or hold hundreds of pictures that I can flick through at a moment’s notice. If it’s not good at making and receiving calls, it’s not worth having. I want my camera to be a decent camera. I don’t care about capturing video clips on it. I want my ebook reader to allow me to purchase and read books. Even though it has built-in wireless and a browser, I have used it to check the Web once in four months or so.

I thought I might be in the minority in my views about device convergence — until I asked folks on Twitter if they were fans of the single device ideal. Most who replied were not. Some cited battery-life issues as the reason they weren’t keen on the single-device-does-all idea. Others said they weren’t interested in devices that were OK at lots of tasks but great at none of them. I don’t need a camera that posts to Twitter, one of my Tweet-buddies quipped.

I’ve been playing lately with the Zune subscription service. (Hey, I never claimed to be an early adopter; in fact, I’m typically a “wait for at least the third version” one.) With the Zune Pass, for $15 a month, you can download a lot of music and keep 10 tracks a month. The Zune Pass service works nicely with my Sony player — not surprising given Microsoft’s growing emphasis on Zune as software and a service and deemphasis of it as a standalone MP3 player. Yes, there are new and much improved Zune players coming on September 15, but I’m far more interested in the non-hardware-specific components than the Zune HDs themselves, especially given my Sony MP3 player is still working well two years after I bought it.

Maybe those of us who would feel more affinity with a portable rotary phone (thanks for the link, Jake) than an all-in-one multi-touch phone/videocam/ebook reader/gaming/photo display/browsing  pedometer/voice-recording device should stop focusing so much on the next cool gadget and pay more attention to the software/services that make them tick.

(Update: As one reader noted, an all-in-one MP3 player/camera/ebook reader/gaming device also could be called a PC. In fact, Apple almost seemed to be repositioning the iPod Touch as a rival to a full-fledged PC as part of its September 9 announcements.)

July 7th, 2009

Life beyond Windows 7: Microsoft updates other products

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:45 am

Categories: CRM Live/CRM Online, Code names, Corporate strategy, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics ERP, Office, Service Pack, Speech, Telecommunications, VOIP, Web conferencing

Tags: Microsoft Commerce Server, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Office, Server, Microsoft Windows, Service Pack, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Update, Microsoft Office Communications Server, Enterprise Software

Believe it or not, Microsoft is still developing enterprise products besides Windows 7 and Office 2010. While those two are garnering most of the headlines and attention lately, other Microsoft product teams are still chugging along, rolling out updates and readying new versions.

Here are just a few of the latest updates that have come across my RSS reader:

Dynamics CRM/ERP: Microsoft has changed the support policy for service packs for its Dynamics line (Dynamics CRM, AX, GP, SL and NAV). According to Microsoft’s Support site, users will now get “24 months of support for a previous service pack, when a new service pack is released. Previously, when a new service pack was released for these products, Microsoft provided 12 months of support for the previous service pack.” Those currently deploying a currently supported Dynamics CRM or ERP service pack will get an additional 12 months of free support. Microsoft also is reactivating support for a number of Dynamics service packs that had expired, but would be grandfathered in under the 24-month policy. There’s no change in the dates for extended, paid support for these service packs.

Office Communications Server: Microsoft has made licensing changes around the instant-messaging connectivity supported by its Office Communications Server (OCS) product. Microsoft is renaming the Live Communications Server Public IM Connectivity (LCS PIC) license to “Office Communications Server Public IM Connectivity (OCS PIC). Those with certain OCS Client Access Licenses (CALs) will no longer require additional licenses to federate with Windows Live — but still will require them to federate with AOL and Yahoo. Windows Live Federation offers users the option to add Windows Live Contacts to their Office Communicator contact lists, view presence status and send/receive IMs between the two products. The OCS licensing changes took effect July 1.

Commerce Server: Last we heard about Commerce Server, Microsoft was planning a number of releases — including the 2009 Commerce Server “Mojave” release and the 2009 R2 “Mojave R2″ release. Microsoft is in the final throes of recruiting Technology Adoption Program (TAP) testers who want to check out the private R2 test release. Microsoft released Commerce Server 2009 to manufacturing in March 2009. The R2 release is looking like an early 2010 product, at this point. The Commerce Server team said to expect yet another Commerce Server release in late 2010 or early 2011. No word on what that one will be codenamed and officially designated.

May 6th, 2009

Microsoft rethinking its Response Point small-business phone strategy

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:11 pm

Categories: Channel, Network service providers, OEMs, Resellers, Speech, Systems integrators, Telecommunications, VOIP

Tags: Strategy, Team, Phone, OEM, Small Business, Microsoft Corp., Team Management, Telecom & Utilities, Management, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft’s advertising units are just one of several that were affected heavily by the second wave of Microsoft layoffs announced on May 5. Response Point, Microsoft’s small-business phone team, also took a hit.

On the Mini-Microsoft blog, several anonymous posters made it sound as if Microsoft has killed the Response Point team and product. But a Microsoft spokesperson said this is not the case.

In response to my questions about the team and its fate, here is what Microsoft is saying:

“While the Response Point group was impacted by yesterday’s job eliminations, the comments in Mini are not correct.

- We will continue to support Response Point version 1.0. and the current OEMs, Service Providers and resellers that are selling it. Customers will continue to be supported through their OEMs.
- We will also continue to promote the product online and spotlight compatible 3rd party services and add-on products.
- The team is evaluating the strategy for the next version of the product and will continue to investigate the opportunity in the small business market.
- The Response Point team has not been moved to another division.”

(According to posts on Mini-Microsoft, the Response Point team was, most recently, part of the Startup Business Accelerator incubator under Sanjay Parthasarathy.  No official word so far on whether MSN Direct and the .Net Micros Framework, which posters on Mini also identified as Parthasarathy projects that got the axe, actually did.)

Last I heard, the Response Point team was hard at work on the next version of Response Point, code-named “Austin.” Based on this new information from Microsoft, it’s not clear when and if that release still will come to market.

Microsoft released Response Point 1.0 in October 2007. The product, which offered VOIP calling and a voice-activated user interface, is aimed at companies with one to 50 phones.  Response Point OEMs — including D-Link, Uniden, Quanta Computer and Aastra, bundle Microsoft’s Response Point software with their phone systems.

“Evaluating the strategy for the next version of the product” doesn’t mean Response Point is definitely going forward (since one option could be to discontinue it).  But that’s all Microsoft is saying publicly at the moment….

April 14th, 2009

Microsoft to release Exchange 2010 beta on April 15

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:48 pm

Categories: Azure, Code names, Corporate strategy, Exchange Server, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, Office Live, SharePoint Server, Speech, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Beta, E-mail, Microsoft Office, Online Communications, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft is releasing for download the first public beta build of Exchange 2010 (the product formerly known as Exchange 14) on April 15. But the rest of the Office 2010 suite isn’t going out to testers until the third quarter of 2009, Microsoft officials said this week.

The Softies shared a few more details on its plans for the next version of its Office client and server products, which, up until now, have been known officially as “Office 14″ on April 14.

Microsoft is now acknowledging what a number of bloggers reported late last week: The products in the Office 14 wave all will be branded as Office 2010. Microsoft also is confirming officially that the client versions of the Office 2010 apps will be available in 32- and 64-bit flavors.

The “tech preview” release of the Office 2010 products coming in the third quarter (rumors still say summer 2009) are expected to be public releases that will be tested by “hundreds of thousands” of individuals, according to Microsoft. In January, Microsoft released an alpha version of its Office 2010 client and server products to a small group of selected testers.

The final version of Exchange 2010 is slated to be released before the end of calendar 2009, while the  Office 2010 client, SharePoint 2010 server, Office Web Applications, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 products aren’t slated to go final until the first half of 2010 — as CEO Steve Ballmer indicated earlier this year — confirmed Julia White, Director of Exchange Product Management.

Microsoft is expecting as many as 1 million testers to download the beta of Microsoft’s on-premise Exchange 2010 software from Microsoft’s Web site, White said. Approximately 5 million testers already are dabbling with the cloud-based complement of Exchange 2010, in the form of Outlook Live, White said. (Outlook Live is available to academics and students only; it is a slightly modified version of the Exchange Online product that is available to the wider business and consumer community.)

The new Exchange release includes a new, integrated e-mail archive functionality, White said. It also includes a number of other new features, including:

• MailTips: A feature designed to give users a warning “before they commit an e-mail faux pas such as sending mail to large distribution groups, to recipients who are out of the office or to recipients outside the organization,” according to Microsoft
• Voice Mail Preview: Functionality allowing users to see text previews of voice mail directly in Outlook.
• Ignore Conversation: An “e-mail ‘mute button’ that “allows people to remove themselves from an irrelevant e-mail string, reducing unwanted e-mail and runaway reply-all threads”
• Conversation View: A feature allowing users to combine related e-mail messages in a single conversation to reduce inbox clutter.
• Call Answering Rules: Customizable call-routing menus with Exchange voice mail

The 2010 release of Office marks the first time in a long time — and maybe ever (the Softies weren’t sure of this themselves) — that Microsoft is delivering Exchange Server separately from the rest of the suite.

(I asked White about Microsoft’s delivery timetable for the next version of Office Communications Server, which, along with Exchange, is considered part of Microsoft’s unified-communications suite. She said she wasn’t sure. For now, I guess we can assume the OCS 2010 release will be delivered alongside the rest of the Office 14 wave, in 2010.)

One other aside, courtesy of White: Outlook Live is not the name of the Skyline mobile e-mail service that Microsoft is planning to target at small-business users. White said she didn’t know what Skyline was and had no information on how it fit into Microsoft’s future e-mail plans.

If any testers download the Exchange Server 2010 bits this week, I’d be interested hearing back on what you think of some of the new features….