.NET Exchange Server for Not Yet Techies

.NET Exchange Server is designed to facilitate communication between workers in all organizations, from small to large distributed enterprises. Although its central email messaging and collaboration functions seem basic, .NET Exchange Server is powerful and can boost business productivity and profitability by enabling employees to work more closely together.

.NET Exchange Server is descended from MS Mail. It is now more powerful and uses 32 bit programs much more efficiently.

Why should a business use .NET Exchange Server? If it is so small that project team members just need to stick their heads outside their cubicles and ask their next door neighbor Charlie a question, maybe that business doesn't need. Even so, what if Charlie's answer to your question turns out to be false and he later claims he didn't say such and such? When important inter-team communications take place around the traditional water cooler, there's no record to resolve disputes.

.NET Exchange Server has a reliable, scalable messaging and collaboration environment that delivers secure messaging capabilities to recipients inside and outside your organization. It is the easy-to-manage mail server that brings people and knowledge together anytime and from anywhere.

Traditional internetworking communications was called shared file messaging. The server was passive. The structure of directories and files was kept on the server in a post office. When one user used a file, say to work on a report, the file was locked to all other users.

So maybe you had something important to add to your assigned section of a report but had to sit twiddling your thumbs waiting for someone else to finish their work on it. Because of this inherent limitation, shared file messaging is limited to a small number of users, making it a pain for large corporations.

.NET Exchange Server uses the client/server which uses an active server to simplify the process. With more work shifted to the server, it requires more size and power.

.NET Exchange Server allows not just for email but discussion groups postings and real time collaboration. In large businesses your team mate Charlie may be on a different continent. You can still discuss the project back and forth.

Various versions of .NET Exchange Server have multicast video conferencing, Microsoft Office Developer Tools, connectors to other local area network–based systems, instant messaging with presence information, 16-gigabyte (GB) data storage maximum, multiple databases per server, clustering, distributed configuration (front-end/back-end deployment) services, chat services, unlimited data storage maximum, data conferencing and application sharing.

.NET Exchange Server also combines powerful workflow tools with Web standards, like Extensible Markup Language (XML) and HTTP.

Various versions of .NET Exchange Server also have X.400 connectivity, the message store can be partitioned into separately manageable databases that can each hold more than 100 gigabytes (GB) of data (in the event of hardware failure, recovery time is decreased because trouble with one database doesn't affect the others), two-way, Active/Active clustering enabled by Microsoft Clustering Services, multiple virtual servers can process messaging requests in a cluster, support for embedded messages in the body of an e-mail message, automatic name resolution against Outlook contacts and .NET Exchange Server addresses and support for multimedia messages, so that users can easily add voice and video clips to a message.

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