[Info] Microsoft Scraps Exchange Edge Services

= 1. Commentary: Microsoft Scraps Exchange Edge Services by Paul Thurrott, News Editor, thurrott@windowsitpro.com

Microsoft issued a bit of good news, bad news last week when it
revealed that its previously expected Microsoft Exchange Server Edge
Services product wouldn't ship in 2005 as planned. Instead, Microsoft
will roll the features from Exchange Edge Services into the next
service pack for Exchange Server 2003 and into the next major version
of Exchange, code-named Kodiak.
So what was Exchange Edge Services? Originally a set of technologies
designed for email protection, enhanced security, and junk email
management, Exchange Edge Services would have expanded the roles that
an Exchange server could perform. Those new roles would have included
a more secure and reliable SMTP gateway for exchanging (ahem) email
with the Internet, a basic infrastructure for antispam (based on the
Caller ID for Email protocol) and antivirus technologies that
Microsoft's partners could have built on, and a new routing-rules
engine that would have let administrators more easily build custom
rules for relay, masquerading, and the like. Microsoft designed
Exchange Edge Services to be installed directly on an Exchange server
box or on different systems on your network, with the idea that these
services would logically sit between the core Exchange functionality
and the outside world.
Microsoft introduced Exchange Edge Services in February 2004 at the
RSA Conference 2004 in San Francisco. The product was to ship in early
2005. Microsoft had never announced its licensing plans for the
product, but my guess is that the company would have provided the
product to existing customers for free. The product also changed over
time, with Microsoft adding support for messaging policy and
antiphishing functionality at the request of customers.
That's all changed. Under the new plan, some technology from
Exchange Edge Services will now appear in Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2
(SP2), currently due in the second half of 2005. These technologies
include an improved version of Exchange Intelligent Message Filter
(IMF) and new antispam technologies that are based on the Sender ID
framework, rather than on Caller ID for Email. Sender ID is a proposed
email authentication standard that Microsoft hopes will be adopted by
a wide range of ISPs. Microsoft resubmitted Sender ID to the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF) for possible standards ratification in
October 2004 after making some compromises based on feedback it
received from partners and critics such as AOL. "Basically all the
antispam functionally originally planned for [Exchange] Edge Services
will be delivered in Exchange 2003 SP2, including updates to the
Intelligent Message Filter and antiphishing technology," a Microsoft
spokesperson said last week.
Most Exchange Edge Services technologies, however, will ship as
part of the next major version of Exchange Server, which is
tentatively slated to ship in 2007 alongside Longhorn Server. Those
technologies include the new messaging policy functionality and the
routing-rules engine. Microsoft says the delay is caused by two needs.
First, most Exchange customers are still migrating to Exchange 2003.
Second, feedback indicated that customers were looking for a more
extensive set of functionality, and delivering that functionality will
require additional time. So the company has decided to break out the
features originally slated for Exchange Edge Services over two
releases, Exchange 2003 SP2 and the next major version of Exchange.
So what should existing Exchange 2003 customers do? Microsoft notes
that IMF technology is available to all Exchange 2003 customers and
that IMF has been extended by third-party providers for those users
who need additional functionality. This is a "making lemonade"
solution, of course. Arguably, this type of functionality should be
included in the base product (a notion that Microsoft implicitly
agrees with, based on its product plans).
If you're still running older versions of Exchange, your options
are less compelling, particularly for Exchange Server 5.5 holdouts. As
the Exchange team has noted repeatedly this year, Exchange 5.5 was
developed when the world was a very different place. Exchange 5.5,
like Windows NT 4.0, is now reaching a crucial juncture in its support
life cycle. As of January 1, 2005, Exchange 5.5 enters its final year
of extended support, and Microsoft will no longer support the product
unless you purchase a custom support license (available in 3-month
increments through the end of 2007). The idea, naturally, is to give
customers time to migrate to Exchange 2003. You can find out more
about this schedule on the Microsoft Web site.
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/e...us/55.mspx


Salu2!!!
Javier Inglés
MS MVP, Windows Server-Directory Services
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx

e-m@il:jingles@NOSPAMmvps.org
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