Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 is a messaging and collaborative software server.  Its use is widespread in educational institutions, businesses and organizations.

How does Microsoft Exchange work?

E-mail messages are sent and received through what is commonly referred to as a client device such as a personal computer, workstation, or a mobile device including mobile phones or Pocket PCs. The client typically connects to a network of centralized computer systems comprised of servers or mainframe computers where the e-mail mailboxes are stored. The centralized e-mail servers connect to the Internet and private networks where e-mail messages are sent to and received from other e-mail users.

Exchange Server is software that runs on servers that enables you to send and receive electronic mail and other forms of interactive communication through computer networks.

Microsoft Exchange manages electronic mail, and allows for shared calendaring.

• Designed to interoperate with a software client application such as Microsoft Outlook and Entourage, Exchange offers you integrated collaborative messaging features such as scheduling, contact, and task management capabilities.
• You can maintain shared address lists that everyone with permission can view and edit, share a calendar and schedule meetings that include people and conference rooms by viewing associated free or busy schedules.
• You can also manage "rules" for processing messages on Exchange Server, giving you the flexibility to create  auto-responses and automatic filing of incoming messages.

Exchange interacts with other tools, such as SharePoint services, which will allow for even more collaboration possibilities.

Client access functionality:

Exchange Server offers you integrated collaborative messaging features such as scheduling, contact, and task management capabilities.

Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 runs on Windows-based computers and communicates with the server running Exchange Server through the MAPI protocol that includes powerful messaging and rich collaboration capabilities.  Microsoft Office Entourage 2004 runs on Macintosh-based computer and communicated with the server running Exchange to provide messaging and collaboration.

Exchange Server also accommodates other client access through its support for secure Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3S) and Internet Message Access Protocol 4 (IMAP4S) protocols.

Microsoft Outlook Web Access, a service in Exchange Server, accommodates persons who are using Web browsers for their e-mail messages.

Mobile access functionality:

Exchange Server 2003 supports mobile devices such as Pocket PC and Smartphones and enables you to synchronize your Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts and Tasks lists so you can remotely check your appointments and other important information. Mobile device browsers are also supported through Exchange Outlook Mobile Access, which enables HTML, compressed HTML (CHTML), and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) browser-based devices to access Exchange Server.

The following diagram illustrates the types of clients that Exchange Server supports:

Types of clients supported by Exchange Server 2003

What's wrong with the current system and how does Microsoft Exchange solve these problems?

Feature: Authentication and Access

How this feature is handled by the Current System
The current e-mail and calendaring systems require the maintenance of three separate accounting structures for sign on validation.

How this feature will be handled and resolved by Microsoft Exchange
Reduces the number of separate authentication systems for sign on from 3 to 1 for effective single sign-on for e-mail and calendaring. Username and password will be entered once to authenticate (sign on), to access e-mail and to access calendaring (we now have three separate ones).

Provides a basis for further username/password consolidations. Only one account, a Windows account, is necessary to access all features of the system.

Outlook and Outlook Web Access (OWA) both use Active Directory to authenticate users' access (we use both LDAP and Active Directory now). The consolidation of two currently used authentication namespaces (existing LDAP and Active Directory) into one (Active Directory) eliminates users' confusion about which password to use and simplifies the maintenance of accounts.

Feature: Security and Encryption

How this feature is handled by the Current System
E-mail exchanges and attachments between two workstations are not encrypted because the current implementation of the e-mail clients does not and cannot support encryption. However, getting e-mail from the e-mail server either by client (Outlook) or Web mail is encrypted using the open source Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption.

How this feature will be handled and resolved by Microsoft Exchange
Implementation of Exchange observes open standards for encryption and promulgates digital certificates and signatures to encrypt e-mail and attachments between workstations.

Getting e-mail from the server will continue to be secure and encrypted using the current open standards of SSL.

The e-mail system is set within the context of a more manageable Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for digital signing and encrypting capabilities that we currently do not have.

Feature: Sending and Receiving e-mail

How this feature is handled by the Current System
Two separate pieces of software are needed, an e-mail client and a calendar client.

Added features such as away messages, forwarding, and password changes are not built-in and have had to be programmed and maintained by OIS.

The web interface is not full-featured, and shows performance problems under certain conditions.

How this feature will be handled and resolved by Microsoft Exchange
No functionality or features will be lost. New ones will be added.

Although Exchange can act purely as an e-mail service provider via SMTP, IMAP4 and POP3, and therefore can service any client supporting those protocols, many of its features, such as group calendaring and task management, can only be accessed by use of the native Exchange client applications (Outlook, Entourage and OWA) from a workstation computer, on campus or off campus.

Feature: Disk Storage, Server Sizing and Upgrades

How this feature is handled by the Current System
The existing disk storage is saturated and provides 20 megabytes of e-mail storage per account. The server has reached its capacity to add more disk storage. More disk storage requires a complete removal of current disk drives and a replacement with new ones, a full day's effort with consequent down time for all. In addition, upgrade or additions to the server itself will require the same solution, complete replacement with down time.

The current system has stand alone disk storage and lacks growth facilities.

How this feature will be handled and resolved by Microsoft Exchange
The Exchange server infrastructure (back end) is a cluster of seven servers providing e-mail and calendar services. These servers are configured with load balancing, automatic rollover of failed equipment, redundancy and high availability. The current system is not as flexible.

Disk space for Exchange is provided by a storage appliance connected to the university Storage Area Network (SAN) by FibreChannel.

Exchange will provide up to 200 megabytes per account, a ten fold increase from what is now available, and faster access times for transferring e-mail to clients' workstations.

The cluster architecture allows on-the-fly replacement of failed equipment or the addition of more equipment without significant down time. Redundant servers and disk storage equipment reduce downtime due to equipment failure. Nightly back ups and snap shots during the day will be performed as a result of the disk architecture. Exchange provides its own built-in performance monitoring tool set.

Feature: Calendar System

How this feature is handled by the Current System
Oracle's Corporate Time software has an uncertain future. The current version has not been supported since December 17, 2004.

How this feature will be handled and resolved by Microsoft Exchange
Exchange provides an exit strategy from Oracle's Corporate Time. It integrates e-mail and calendaring into one application which makes it less clumsy to use and easier to support. It eliminates the maintenance work on home grown interfaces that make calendar and e-mail appear to be seamless.

What are some other benefits that the campus community will gain by using Microsoft Exchange?

Campus wide e-mails

• On-campus rich text bulk e-mails are built-in. This is now a separate request handled through a home grown OIS e-mail parser. The current campus wide mail engine does not handle rich text.
• More complex bulk e-mail tasks are possible, e.g. "send this e-mail only to all first year students."
• Bulk e-mail delivery is less resource intensive since only one copy of the e-mail is kept on the server cluster and recipients access it by using pointers.

Distribution Lists

• Distribution Lists are viewed as one recipient in public folders with pointers for each person on the list, so the distribution of e-mail to lists is more efficient and less resource intensive on the network and on disk storage.
• By maintaining and creating their own distribution lists senders will have the ability to better target their e-mail communications rather than relying on campus-wide e-mail messages.
• Provide for easier integration with the new Constituent Relations Management (CRM) application for further refinement of communication strategies.

Features

• Ability to keep 200 MB of e-mail (including sent items from Outlook) on the server accessible via Webmail at all times.
• Provide a more full-featured web-enabled front-end (OWA) that will give end-users the ability to perform e-mail and calendaring tasks. Interaction with the Global Contacts directory will have the look and feel of the desktop client.
• Today there is no web-enabled access to Corporate Time and the open source web mail product in use is not full-featured. This is a boon to off campus users to access e-mail and calendar.
• Provide the necessary infrastructure for instant messaging, if needed.
• Trainable built-in "SPAM" filter in addition to the main spam agent.

Handheld Devices support

• Interfaces for integration and synchronization with most hand-held devices are "out-of-the-box" compared the one-on-one efforts we now have for these devices.

When will the campus community be migrated to Exchange and what exactly will occur?

Puget Sound faculty, students and staff will be migrated to Microsoft Exchange during the weekend preceding spring break - beginning at 5:00 p.m. on March 10, 2006.  The decision to migrate to Exchange during the week of spring break was decided upon by the President's Cabinet in consultation with OIS on December 13, 2005. 

No changes to the current e-mail and calendaring system will be made before the conversion.

The deployment of Exchange for staff will be on a compressed timeline, largely due to the calendaring conversion. Because staff relies heavily on the calendaring system, we cannot afford to leave some staff on the old system while other staff is converted to the new system. This will simply lead to too much confusion.

Therefore, Exchange will be deployed in a "cutover" fashion: users will begin using Exchange for both e-mail and calendaring past the deployment date and they will not use the legacy e-mail and calendar systems again.

A similar situation exists for faculty and for students. Although faculty and students do not rely on calendaring, it is important to maintain a consistency of experience for our users and reduce confusion for our support people. Some of these same considerations led to the conversion of these areas to the PUGETSOUND windows domain.

At 5:00 p.m. on Friday March 10, 2006, OIS will begin converting the e-mail accounts of faculty, students and staff, and the Corporate Time calendars of faculty and staff.

We expect the e-mail and calendaring systems to be unavailable from 5:00 p.m. on March 10, 2006 through 8:00 a.m. on March 13, 2006.

How can faculty, students and staff prepare for the migration?

• Delete or move unnecessary e-mail messages and attachments from your existing e-mail Inbox and other mail folders saved on the mail server.
• Migrate from Eudora for the PC to Outlook.
• Migrate from Eudora for the Mac to Entourage.
• Print a copy of your current CorporateTime personal and resource calendars to verify all appointments have been accurately copied to Exchange calendar.  All CorporateTime calendar information from July 1, 2004 through June 30, 2007 will be copied to Exchange calendar.
• Attend Outlook and Entourage training before the migration to Exchange.
• After the migration to Exchange, attend Outlook/Outlook Web Access (OWA) and Entourage training sessions to learn how to use these clients for your e-mail, calendaring and task needs via the Exchange server.  These training sessions will be offered during spring break.