Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Drops Together with Longhorn

The first service pack for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 now has an official release date. On February 23, 2007, Terry Myerson, General Manager, Microsoft Exchange Server revealed that the Beta for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 will be made available via TechNet plus in April 2007. Concomitantly with this announcement, Microsoft has also pointed out a due date for the release of the final version of SP1. Myerson informed that Microsoft is targeting the final release of Exchange Server 2007 SP1 with Windows Longhorn Server in the second half of this year.

"Our work in this service pack is purely in response to your feedback on earlier releases of Exchange 2007, Myerson said, adding a few examples of the features included in the service pack. "With Exchange 2007, we introduced Clustered Continuous Replication (CCR) for replication of data between 2 servers within a cluster within the same datacenter. With SCR, data replicates to a non-clustered server in a remote datacenter. If the primary datacenter becomes unavailable, the standby replica in the second datacenter is readily available to be activated."

But CCR is not the only feature that has been added in Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1. In fact, this release has given Microsoft a chance to address the issues that has not been completed until the product had reached RTM. Personal distribution lists, S/MIME, Rules, Monthly calendar view, Deleted items recovery and support for viewing Office 2007 file formats as HTML will all be introduced in the first service pack.

But Microsoft has also focused on delivering increased mobility with a set of enforcing policies. Additionally, the graphical user interface holes that shipped with the RTM version, have been filled in. The web service coverage has been extended, as well as the import/export capabilities of the mailbox. And Exchange Server 2007 will also be supported on IPv6 networks on Windows Longhorn Server.