icrosoft in Visual C#

Creator QR Code JIS X 0510 in Visual C# icrosoft

Despite some early problems and a Windows Mobile client that continues to lag behind its competitors in terms of usability and features, the level of integration with Exchange that ActiveSync boasts, together with its unbeatable price point (zero extra cost), means that it has had a huge impact in driving mobile access for Exchange. Microsoft s client access strategy supports the connection of a huge array of clients to Exchange 2010. Exchange Server 2010 supports a variety of different client types.

Maximum functionality and features are available in Microsoft s own fat clients for Windows and Apple Mac that are part of the Office family. Microsoft doesn t support

connecting very old versions of Outlook to Exchange 2010, so you ll need to deploy at least Outlook 2003 before you can connect to Exchange 2010. If you don t like buying client software from Microsoft, you can use the Internet Message Access Protocol 4 (IMAP4) or POP3 protocols to connect anything from a free Microsoft client (like Windows Mail) to a mobile device that doesn t support ActiveSync.

If you decide to use Outlook Web App (OWA), you have a range of supported Web browsers from Internet Explorer to Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. As you d expect, versions 7 and 8 of Internet Explorer deliver maximum functionality, and you can get the same experience (OWA Premium) if you use Firefox or Safari. However, OWA Premium is supported only when Safari runs on Apple Mac OS X. Other browsers, including Opera, can use the downgraded OWA Basic or light version, which is still highly functional, if not quite as flashy as the premium edition. The full matrix of supported browsers for different versions of Exchange is available at http://technet .microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728623.aspx. In the past, Microsoft s strategy for mobile clients has been centered on the partnership of server-based ActiveSync and Windows Mobile clients that run Outlook Mobile. Even today, you need to run Windows Mobile 6.5 or later for clients to enjoy the latest experience, but you can upgrade the Outlook Mobile application on Windows Mobile 6.1 to access the enhanced features delivered by Exchange 2010. I expect that Microsoft mobile clients will continue to deliver highly functional new versions of Outlook Mobile. However, the push to expand the set of available ActiveSync clients has gathered momentum over the last few years, and Microsoft has been very successful in licensing ActiveSync to companies that build mobile clients and mobile applications from Apple to Google to Nokia to Palm so it is not difficult to find suitable devices; in fact, restricting the number of device types that connect to Exchange is often a challenge for administrators. If you are among the millions of corporate email users who depend on their BlackBerry, you can continue to use the latest version of RIM s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) to connect BlackBerry devices to Exchange 2010 (an upgrade for BES is necessary to deal with the new application programming interfaces [APIs] introduced in Exchange 2010).

10

The interesting thing about Microsoft s client access strategy is how much improvement has been made in the Web and mobile platforms in the last few releases. New APIs for browsers, general availability across an extremely wide range of mobile devices, smarter networking, and hard engineering effort has enabled Microsoft to get to a point where they can credibly claim to have delivered on three screens.

The perennial issue that comes to mind once Microsoft ships a new version of Exchange is what you should do with Outlook. In the past, Outlook and Exchange had a tenuous relationship. For whatever reasons in the depths of Microsoft politics, the two product groups didn t work together particularly well, and despite the fact that Exchange was easily the most functional and powerful mail server to which Outlook could connect, the focus of the Outlook development group seemed to be far more on Internet mail servers. In some respects, this was natural because far more people use Outlook as part of the Microsoft Office suite in non-Exchange environments (home, college, and connecting to other email systems, including Gmail and Lotus Notes), but it was puzzling at the same time, especially because Outlook s support for IMAP seems weaker than other clients such as Thunderbird or Eudora. Things began to improve in Outlook 2003 when Microsoft did the work to introduce cached Exchange mode and made many changes to improve Outlook s networking demands. Cached Exchange mode has proven to be fundamental for Exchange because without it Microsoft s foray into hosted Exchange online services would be much more difficult. It s also fair to say that the ability of cached Exchange mode to isolate users from network failures has greatly improved the user experience. Further improvements occurred in Outlook 2007, which was released alongside Exchange 2007, and the two product groups seemed to share a common approach to solving the problems of large-scale enterprise-class deployments. Alas, the release of Exchange 2010 marks a divergence, as Outlook 2010 was released sometime after Exchange appeared to raise the inevitable issue of whether to wait to deploy the latest generations of server and client together or to go ahead with Exchange and deploy Outlook afterward. As we will see, the question isn t simply a matter of deployment timing, because some functionality in Exchange 2010 is dependent on client-side code incorporated in Outlook 2010 or simply works better with Outlook 2010. Answering this question is easier for small companies than it is for large ones. The law of numbers conspires to create much greater complexity when a new application must be distributed to tens of thousands of desktops and issues such as user training, preparing the help desk to support the rollout, and the cost of new software licenses and potential hardware upgrades are considered. This is the reason so many companies continue to run Outlook 2003 or even earlier clients; they see no logic in going forward with an upgrade that promises great cost for new licenses and deployment while offering little obvious return in the form of user productivity, lower support costs, or anything else. The fact that the Exchange server CALs no longer include a license for Outlook will also make it harder for companies to justify an early upgrade.