My hobby, like most people at PCSN, is IT. So when I'm not busy working on issues or enhancements with clients, I'm busy working on projects like migrations and testing new software. I can write a whole book about what I've been doing within last couple of months, like implementing cloud infrastructure, desktop in the cloud, so on and so forth, but today I will limit myself to messaging, and specifically Exchange.

I have been testing Exchange 2010 and if you are still on Exchange 2003, you should be thinking about upgrading.

There are several reasons why you should consider this. There are the obvious reasons of better scalability and robustness that come with new clustering technologies and techniques, but this not something top of mind for a small business. Most small businesses are just running one Exchange server and it works plenty fine.

I think what impacts most small business is the user front-end. If you are used to Exchange 2003 and you have tried Outlook Web Access (OWA) then you are aware of the limitation of OWA and how it can at times be crippling when you want to edit or save something that is not supported, like a task or journal entry.

When customers first move to Exchange 2007 from Exchange 2003, I hear "wow, OWA is amazing", but still, OWA in Exchange 2007 is not as amazing as OWA in Exchange 2010.

If you use any other browser other than Internet Explorer, then you will only get the "light" version of OWA in Exchange 2007. This is history, Exchange 2010 will give you the full version in pretty much any recent browser, Firefox or Safari included.

So for people who use machines that do not support Internet Explorer, this opens up a whole new world. I think we are very close to where you can actually not install Outlook at all and just use OWA as your primary email client.

If you are considering migrating Exchange hardware or upgrading hardware, consider migrating to Exchange 2010 and start taking advantage of not only more usable OWA but also encrypted connectivity between client and server, robust recovery, scalability and connectivity.