Microsoft recently announced the immediate and somewhat unexpected availability of Microsoft Exchange 2010 beta. Chris Capossela, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Information Worker Product Management, announced that Exchange 2010 would be released to market in the second half of 2009. Also, details about SP2 for Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) were recently announced. So there’s lots to cover this week.

Revelations About Exchange 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, and MOSS 2007 SP2

Storage

Exchange 2010 includes improvements in performance, reliability, and high availability that enable organizations to run Exchange on a wide range of storage options. Building on improvements to disk input/output (IO) that were introduced in Exchange 2007, the latest version of Exchange requires less storage performance and is more tolerant of storage failures.

The improvements made to Exchange Server 2010 storage add new options to the menu of Exchange storage choices, including the use of Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) hard disk drives and Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)-less configurations. Whether administrators choose SAN, direct attached, or JBOD storage, Exchange helps them provide larger mailboxes at lower cost without sacrificing system availability.

Functional Descriptions

IO Reductions: Exchange 2010 delivers up to a 50% reduction in disk IO from Exchange 2007 levels.  This means that more disks meet the minimum performance required to run Exchange, driving down storage costs.

Optimizations for SATA Disks: IO patterns are optimized so that disk writes do not come in bursts. This removes a barrier that had previously limited the use of Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) desktop class hard disk drives disks.

Automatic Page Patching: Exchange Server 2010 is more resilient to storage problems. When corruption is caused by minor disk faults, Exchange automatically repairs the affected database pages using one of the database copies configured for high availability. Automatic detection and repair of data corruptions from minor disk errors means that you can take advantage of lower-cost storage options while maintaining system reliability.

JBOD Support: Exchange 2010 can be deployed with up to 16 replicated copies of each mailbox database, and fast database-level failover makes it possible for administrators to swap failed drives with minimal impact to users. This application-level redundancy allows RAID-less (JBOD) storage configurations to be used, resulting in dramatic cost savings.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Storage

REDMOND, Wash. — April 15, 2009 — Microsoft Corp. today released a public beta of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, part of Microsoft’s unified communications family (http://www.microsoft.com/uc).

Exchange 2010 is part of the next wave of Microsoft Office-related products and is the first server in a new generation of Microsoft server technology built from the ground up to work on-premises and as an online service. This release of Exchange 2010 introduces a new integrated e-mail archive and features to help reduce costs and improve the user experience. A public beta of the server is available for download starting today at http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010.

Exchange Server 2010 will become available in the second half of 2009. Microsoft Office 2010 and related products will enter technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and become available in the first half of 2010.

“Exchange 2010 ushers in the next generation of Microsoft unified communications software as the first server designed from inception to work both on-premises and as an online service,” said Rajesh Jha, corporate vice president of Exchange at Microsoft. “This release raises the bar with new archiving and end-user innovations that will help companies save money and employees save time.”

Exchange 2010 will help organizations reduce costs, protect communications and delight e-mail users with capabilities to do the following:

Microsoft Unveils Exchange 2010 With Public Beta: First in the next wave of Office-related products, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 will help lower communications costs, improve user productivity and transform e-mail archiving.

During his annual “Strategic Update” briefing with Wall Street analysts on February 24, CEO Steve Ballmer said Office 14 won’t be shipping in 2009.

“Office 14 will not be this year,” Ballmer told analysts.

Microsoft officials have been careful not to provide a ship-date target for the next version of Office. However, last year, more than a few times execs slipped up and indicated Office 14 would ship in 2009. Just a month or two ago, Microsoft reps were telling corporate customers that Office 14 would ship in either late 2009 or early 2010.

Ballmer: Office 14 not this year | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Several years ago, Microsoft execs seemed to be leaning toward delivering different versions of Office that were tailored to particular verticals. As time went by, I assumed that plan had been abandoned. Looks like it wasn’t.

Alpha testers who’ve started getting access to early Office 14 code are reporting there’s a new server-based product known as “Office for Sales 14″ that is part of the line-up. Here’s what I’ve managed to glean from them so far about Office for Sales:

• It’s an end-to-end CRM product that will incorporate both software and services components
• The product is based on and hooked inextricably into SharePoint Server
• Developers will be able to customize the system to integrate with third-party products, like Siebel CRM
• Features include the ability to store customer information in Outlook; maintenance of a centralized Sales Center SharePoint site; the creation of sales communities; and support for “sales interaction management” (SIM)

A new member of the Office 14 family: Office for Sales | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com