Microsoft have unveiled the latest incarnation of their Exchange mail and calendar server, Exchange 2010, and announced the commencement of a public beta program.

The intention is to release an integrated suite of office products at roughly the same time, including Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010. The cynics amongst us would say that Microsoft are attempting to lock everyone in, with an integrated server/client strategy, now that their file formats have been opened up by the EU and others. Microsoft on the other hand, prefer to see it as giving "people a consistent experience across devices, making it easier to create and edit documents and collaborate from any location".

Exchange will be the first of the new products, becoming available in late 2009. Microsoft Office 2010 and related products will hopefully reach the technical preview stage in the third quarter of 2009 and become available in the first half of 2010.

The new features in Exchange include:

• Better performance on SANs and increased redundancy options
• Mention of the availability of Microsoft hosted solutions
• Better archiving
• A new concept called MailTips to warn users "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 organisation, helping protect against information leaks and reduce unnecessary e-mail messages". Although this sounds like a nice idea, being warned every time you send an external e-mail may become a tad annoying. But if it can stop people replying to all it accidentally it gets our vote
• Ignore conversation. The ability to "mute" an email conversation where everyone is replying to all and you really don't care.
• Better integration with voicemail

As usual with Microsoft, we'll wait and see if they can hit their own deadline.

More here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/apr09/04-15Exchange2010PR.mspx