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Should you Upgrade to Exchange 2010?
I know I talk a lot about these upgrade questions, but I think it is important to take a look at the real value behind an upgrade, and make a decision based on whether it makes sense for your business.
Fundamentaly, I can see two real reasons to upgrade any major system:
- There are features in the new version you want
- The new version will positively impact productivity or reduce costs
With Exchange 2010, there is a bit of each, depending on how you use it.
In terms of features, there are a few really interesting new features – my favorite being the voicemail preview function, that transcribes voicemails so you can quickly scan them in an email. I can’t think of how much time I would save with that function in addition to the times I am in a meeting and can’t listen to voicemail (I admit, I do email in meetings). There are also some handy changes coming in the Outlook Web Access, Archiving, and Compliance management that may be of interest to many types of users such as Public Companies, Doctors, and Lawyers.
As to reducing costs and improving productivity, I think that the improved I/O (input/output) capabilities are the big sell. Microsoft claims that 2010 will require 70% less disk I/O, which means a few important things. First of all, it means that in large data stores, you can use lower speed cheaper hard drives and still get excellent performance, and this can save relevant amounts of money. It also means that really huge inboxes will be much easier to manage with far fewer errors than has historically been true, and this is really relevant with lawyers for example, that often keep very large inboxes. I for one struggle with trimming my inbox all the time keep it within recommended best practices.
All in all, the world will all get to 2010 eventually. Adoption is often slow, and a rough economy does not help, but I for one see Microsoft really working to put interesting and value added features into their most recent spate of releases (Windows 7, Office 2010, and now Exchange 2010) that will help speed up adoption. For many users, the new features and potential increased productivity make this a smart move!
