The intention of Microsoft's Exchange 2000 is to provide Anytime, Anywhere systems to enable companies to provide their employees with facilities for better communication with their customers and with each other. It has been reported that Exchange 2000 and Windows 2000 Server version meets this requirement.
Exchange 2000 Server allows the sharing of resources across networks and provides a common user directory, security system and management infrastructure thus allowing easier messaging facilities and network management.
Included features are Instant Messaging, real-time data and video-conferencing.
Outlook Web Access which is the Exchange web client, allows use of the web browser to access e-mail, scheduling, contacts and collaborative information that is stored in the Microsoft Web Storage System folders. Areas of improvement are:
- Appearance moving to look more like Outlook
- Embedded messages in e-mail messages for both sending and receiving
- In-frame navigation
- Embedded OLE object renderings
- More settings for the user interface, so they can set their out-of-office settings
- URLs for Inbox and other exchange information
- Unified Messaging Platform
- Instant Messaging and chat services
- Data conferencing allowing application sharing, discussion for users to interact, file transfer, whiteboard capabilities
- Audio and Video conferencing
With today's business requirements, access to information across geographic, organisational and technological obstacles makes it critical that communication is effective and quick, therefore it would be interesting to hear whether these applications are moving in the right direction, please add your comments below.
