Is Exchange Server 2003 worth pitching?

The roiling waters of Lake Product Churn have washed up yet another new shiny piece of software flotsam on Microsoft’s beach: Exchange Server 2003. Microsoft released Exchange 2003 RC1 into the wild last month, which means that a shrink-ready version should follow before summer’s end. For us consultant-types, this situation always spawns the same question: Is it worth trying to talk my customers into the upgrade?

Some of you might say, “Of course, you twit. Your guys get paid by the hour, so any sale is a good thing.” Recent experience on the front lines, however, says differently. IT consulting is now a much more customer-oriented business, with an emphasis on maintaining relationships with long-term clients. The quickest way to screw up one of those is to insist on an expensive upgrade that gives the client a headache during the upgrade process and afterward provides no discernable value. For me to feel comfortable selling Exchange 2003 to my customer base, I have to be able to show it has worth beyond simply keeping up with Microsoft’s product maps.

Fortunately, someone in Redmond seems to have realized that this time. Exchange 2003 can definitely bring value all its own to even an existing Exchange 2000 installation. In my opinion, one of the best sellers is going to be its integrated anti-spam features. Exchange 2003 uses SMTP to provide built-in anti-spam capability via the Exchange System Manager console. From here, you can configure global message delivery rules and then apply them to any SMTP virtual server that’s receiving traffic. I’m not done testing this feature yet, but so far, configuration is a snap, and it’s certainly made a quantitative difference in the amount of spam mail our test site has been receiving.

Because a lot of my customers have roving employees, including maintenance folks, messengers, and mobile managers, e-mail connectivity to mobile devices has been a big deal over the last few years. This is another area where Exchange 2003 will prove its worth. Exchange 2003 now allows you to use the Exchange Task Wizard to configure Exchange’s mobile features, including Outlook’s mobile access feature and user-initiated synchronization parameters.

Finally, there’s security. This is less of a clear-cut selling point than the above-mentioned features because it's less visible to the user’s eye, but it’s good to be able to address this question with new ammunition. Exchange Server 2003 does provide new security features, especially around the Exchange Store which now uses a more secure set of applications to deliver exposed functionality such as Outlook Web Access.

Unfortunately, security brings us to a potential weak point in the Exchange 2003 hawking process: client support. To take advantage of all of Exchange 2003’s new security features, clients should be running Outlook 2003 and preferably Windows XP Professional underneath that. If you’re saying this during a client meeting, you’ve probably just tripled the cost of upgrading the server alone.