Q1: What is Exchange Server 2010?

Microsoft Exchange Server, the cornerstone of Microsoft’s Unified Communications solution, is a flexible and reliable messaging platform that can help you lower your messaging costs by 50-80%, increase productivity with anywhere access to business communications, and safeguard your business with protection and compliance capabilities that help you manage risk.

Q2: How can Exchange Server 2010 lower messaging costs by 50-80%?

A new, unified approach to high availability and disaster recovery helps achieve new levels of reliability as it reduces the complexity and cost of delivering business continuity up to 80%. With new features, such as Database Availability Groups and online mailbox moves, you can more easily and confidently implement mailbox resiliency with database-level replication and failover, all with familiar Exchange management tools.

Greater choice of storage hardware options
Greater choice of storage hardware options, allows you to tailor your Exchange infrastructure to your organization’s specific business or technology needs while lowering the overall storage costs 50-70%. Storage options range from support for traditional Storage Area Networks (SAN) to low-cost, desktop class Direct Attached Storage (DAS). Larger mailbox size ensures that employees can access the information they need to do their jobs in a quick and efficient manner, without spending time deleting messages and managing their inbox to stay under the imposed limit.

Administrative advances
Administrative advances in Exchange 2010 can help you save time and lower operational costs 15-20% by reducing the burden on your IT staff. A new role-based security model, self-service capabilities, and the Web-based Exchange Control Panel, allow you to delegate common or specialized tasks to your users without providing them full administrative rights or increasing help desk call volume.

Q3: How does Exchange Server 2010 help me save time managing my inbox?

Time-saving inbox management tools that help your users more easily organize and prioritize the communications they receive each day. Exchange 2010 includes an enhanced conversation view that automatically arranges messages into threads, regardless of their location in the inbox, and MailTips that inform users about details that could result in unnecessary or undeliverable e-mail messages, before they click send. New integrated support for instant messaging (powered by Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2) and SMS text messaging in Outlook Web App means your users can have a range of communication tools at their disposal, anywhere they can log into the Web client.

Q4: What about the Exchange voicemail experience?

A transformed voicemail experience with Exchange-powered voice mail enhancements like speech-to-text previews of received voice messages, and the flexibility for your users to create customized voice mail menus and call handling rules to ensure callers are given the right priority. Replace your legacy systems with the enhanced capabilities of Exchange voice mail and reduce your voice mail costs by 50%.

Q5: What about the Exchange three-screen experience?

The best three-screen user experience available through Outlook on the desktop, Outlook Web App in the Web browser, and Exchange ActiveSync, the de facto industry standard for mobile devices. With the built in capabilities of Exchange Active Synch, you can Reduce costs for secure mobile messaging while supporting users on virtually any smart phone, including IPhones, Windows Mobile or Blackberry.

Q6: How does Exchange help with email archiving?

New integrated, out-of-the-box e-mail archiving gives you tools to preserve e-mail data without changing the experience for your users or IT staff. Combined with the flexibility provided by the Exchange storage architecture, you can take control of your corporate e-mail data with a personal archive that seamlessly surfaces in both Outlook and Outlook Web App.

Q7: How does Exchange help with email retention policies?

A new retention policy framework allows your IT staff to define, deploy, and automate the expiry and archiving of e-mail data. In addition to default policies set by your IT staff, your users can select and apply retention policies to individual messages or folders. And Exchange 2010 adds a new legal hold policy that retains and places on hold any edits or deletions of e-mail data that users make. A simplified e-Discovery process with a new Web-based multi-mailbox search feature. This easy-to-use capability can be delegated to specialist users, like a compliance officer, without providing the users full administrative privileges.

Q8: How does Exchange help protect my information?

New Transport Protection Rules help you safeguard sensitive business information. You can automatically apply Information Rights Management (IRM) policies to both e-mail and voice mail messages, after they have been sent, based on a range of message content criteria.

Q9: Is Exchange Server 2010 optimized for Software plus Services?

Exchange Server 2010 was designed, developed, and tested with the Microsoft Software-plus-Services strategy at its core. Choose from on-premise deployment with Exchange 2010, a Microsoft-hosted service with Exchange Online, or a seamless mix of both. You can decide when and how you take advantage of on-premise, hosted, cloud-based, and hybrid solutions without interrupting or changing the experience for your users.

Q10: Tell me more about Outlook Web App?

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Outlook Web App deliver a rich, familiar Web e-mail experience, so your users can work and collaborate more effectively wherever they are. Users can access e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging, SMS text messages, and more—all in one place and through all major Web browsers.

Conversation view puts messages in context to help users to manage large e-mail volumes more efficiently. Users can choose the right communication mode by seeing other users’ presence and contacting them through e-mail, instant messaging, or SMS directly from Outlook Web App.

Collaborating with colleagues outside the organization is also easier with external calendar sharing.

The new MailTips feature helps prevent inadvertent embarrassment or intellectual property leaks by alerting users of potential mistakes or policy violations before they hit send.

Across platforms and locations, Exchange 2010 and Outlook Web App deliver a great Web-based messaging experience to make your users more productive and help lessen inbox overload.