This Exchange preps you for next year's OS
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Exchange Server 5.5 stores directory information. REDMOND, Wash.—Installing Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 could ease the path to next year's Microsoft Windows NT Server 5.0 network operating system. In briefings at Microsoft's corporate headquarters last week, Exchange group product manager David Malcolm said the Active Directory Services component of NT Server 5.0 will pull user information from the current version of Exchange.
Exchange Server 5.5 stores directory information.
REDMOND, Wash.Installing Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 could ease
the path to next years Microsoft Windows NT Server 5.0 network operating system.
In briefings at Microsofts corporate headquarters last week, Exchange group
product manager David Malcolm said the Active Directory Services component of NT Server
5.0 will pull user information from the current version of Exchange.
Exchange Server 5.5 stores directory information such as user phone numbers, addresses
and titles in a fashion that is partly customizable by the Exchange administrator.
In an upgrade to NTS 5.0, the user information can be pulled into ADS user data.
It will coexist in both databases until the next version of Exchange is installed.
That next version of Exchange will likely be ready about 90 days after NT Server 5.0
comes out in 1999, Microsoft officials said.
Malcolm would not say when NT 5.0 will be ready, however, promising only before
the year 2000.
In NT Server 5.0 and the next Exchange version, code-named Platinum, much of the
directory information store will shift from the messaging product to the NOS, he said.
That could present difficulties for sites that have not installed Exchange Server 5.5.
Malcolm said Platinum will have some backward compatibility with Exchange 5.5, but he
would not say how or whether Exchange 4.0 or 5.0 would fit into the picture.
Moreover, Exchange Platinum will require that NT Server 5.0 be installed on the server.
That means users of Defense Message System servers might be forced to change to NT
Server 5.0 if they have Platinum installed for messaging.
With their Fortezza PC Cards, users of the future Exchange and a future version of the
Microsoft Internet Explorer browser will enjoy a new convenience: secure retrieval of
their DMS messages over the Web. The current Outlook Web Access cannot retrieve messages
securely.
The Fortezza PC Cards would work in connection with the Secure Sockets Layer protocol
and around 40 encryption algorithms. About five of the algorithms come under the FIPS
140-1 Level 2 certification Microsoft expects to receive soon from the National Institute
of Standards and Technology (see story, Page 1).
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