Remember when we told you that we didn’t like to be bogged down by traditional telephony? Well, here’s our proof. We have adopted Exchange 2010, the newest version of Exchange, replacing the old 2007 model and adding a plethora of exciting new features, improvements and capabilities for the ultimate user experience. I would try to list all the virtues but I’m afraid I’d go blue in the face before I finished so I’ll just highlight the most salient advances in office communications.    

The first and most obvious difference between our implementations of 2010 and 2007 versions is that one physically exists and the other does not. What I mean is that the 2007 version is a tangible machine and takes up valuable office space, verses Exchange 2010 which is a virtual machine and much easier to manage. Brought in by Microsoft, Exchange 2010 has additional functionality and fully loaded support for virtualisation.

What is Exchange Server 2010 truly about? Unified communications.  I’ll give you two examples. 

     1) With Exchange 2010 you can set call divert rules, so that if you’re on the phone and a second caller appears, you have choices. There are pre-set options for where calls from specific people will go. You can send your boss’ calls straight to your mobile phone so that you never miss his call.  A general enquiry call can be immediately forwarded to someone available, so that the caller doesn’t have to wait on hold to receive the same service. You can also send calls straight to voicemail, or, and this is my favourite part, voice to text voicemail, where the voicemail is transcribed into text and sent to your email.  Nice.

     2) Imagine a world where you can access your emails in Outlook wherever you go, and what’s more, all of your business communications are centralised, providing easier access and functionality. The new Exchange also has online archiving, so if your PC crashes, dies, blue screen of death, whatever, your archives are safe and protected.  Exchange 2010 is better designed for making use of the rebranded Outlook Web App on mobile phones through any browser, and by that I mean all mobile phones, WinMo and iPhone alike. There’s a strong suspicion that this web application might turn into the full version of Outlook in the future.

Oh, in case you were worried about a troublesome switchover, the migration was ultra smooth.  We were able to start migrating accounts to Exchange 2010 whilst still using Exchange 2007, so that the two servers ran side by side before we shut down the 2007 version, thus ensuring there were no interruptions to our service.  We can’t tell you enough how much we are loving our new virtual server, it’s like the wind, you can’t see it but you know it’s there.