5 Reasons why Microsoft Exchange Server will Remain Relevant

Written by Paul Mah on May 23, 2011
The prevalence of free and high-quality web-based email services has undoubtedly helped advance the prevalence of emails. Indeed, one of the first stops for a new Internet user these days would be to first pick up an email account or two at one of the free webmail providers. Given the familiarity of users with web-hosted emails, should Exchange Administrators be at all concerned that Exchange Server would eventually lose its appeal?

Well, my personal opinion is that Exchange Server will continue to retain its relevance for some time yet, especially in the realm business. I’ve highlighted some of the reasons below.

1. The Hosted Exchange route

Buoyed by the advantages of a cloud-based deployment, some companies have made a strategic decision to migrate their on-premise server deployments into the cloud. This doesn’t necessarily sound the death knell for Exchange Server however, given Microsoft’s foresight in creating a version of Exchange for cloud deployment. Depending on the flexibility of partners and the size of your deployment, Email Administrators can leverage on the full breathe of capabilities found in Exchange but set up as a hosted solution.

2. Web email with Outlook Web Access

Employees or businesses that desiring a Web-only approach to cut down on maintenance costs will still be able to tap into Outlook Web App (OWA). As implemented in Exchange 2010, OWA lets staffers effectively access their email and voicemail from any of the major web browsers on the market (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari). Users are able to access their calendar, contacts and tasks – providing a level of usability from a web platform practically indistinguishable from that of a desktop experience.

3. Convenience of Outlook

I’ve used a variety of email clients over a span of 15 years, ranging from the likes of Eudora in the past, and open source ones such as Thunderbird. I’ve eventually gone back to Microsoft Outlook 2010, which I currently use on a day-to-day basis. As I wrote in an article published on TheEmailAdmin last year, Outlook 2010 not only offers a polished interface but includes advanced features for business collaboration such as shared calendars, threaded view, and support for connecting to multiple Exchange Servers.

4. Popularity of Exchange ActiveSync

Confronted with RIM’s robust push mail technology, Microsoft created the very first version of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) in 2002. The technology was subsequently enhanced and shipped together with Exchange Server 2003; and the EAS protocol has come a long way since those early days. For example, Exchange Server 2010 shipped with EAS 14.0 which incorporates the ability to look up the free/busy status of a user as well as SMS syncing, among other new capabilities. So not only is EAS a cornerstone of Exchange Server today, but the protocol is also widely implemented on other operating systems such as the iOS and Android.

5. Strength of Archival Options

Google’s commitment to achieve zero downtime for Google Apps and the company’s revision of its SLA terms notwithstanding, Gmail suffered an outage earlier this year after a buggy storage driver update resulted in corrupted data being replicated across its data centers. Thankfully, offline tape backups meant that no data were actually lost. As I highlighted in The Big Gmail Crash and the Lesson for Email Administrators in March, one of the lessons gleaned from the outage pertains to the value of an offline backup.

The crux of the matter has to do with the fact that while it is undeniable that many cloud hosted solutions are highly redundant, users have practically no control over the actual backup or archival process. This is underscored by various third-party vendors that swiftly unveiled software tools for offline archival of Gmail accounts. Unfortunately, though these utilities may be highly usable, they are ill-suited for the demands of the average businesses.

In comparison, Microsoft Exchange is a highly-respected messaging server that has been around for more than 15 years. Deployed by some of the largest enterprises, Exchange support can be found in every business-centric archival and backup application today. Moreover, there are also many tried-and-tested tools that work exclusively with Exchange to deliver the maximum choice for administrators when it comes to backup and archival capabilities.

While it would be impossible to project the popularity of Exchange Server another 20 years down the road, I think it is safe to say that Microsoft’s flagship messaging server won’t be going away anytime soon.