Exchange's uneasy dominance
by Volker Weber
Microsoft has the undivided attention of competitors, most of which aren't shy about pitching their collaboration products as alternatives to Exchange. Dozens of vendors can claim that their products do the core of what Exchange does - e-mail and calendaring/scheduling - and can do it less expensively.
On the customer side of the equation, Microsoft is painfully aware that no more than one-quarter of its Exchange 5.5 installed base has upgraded to Exchange 2000, in spite of that latter version's having been on the market for more than two years. Users' beefs with Exchange 5.5 and Outlook include the products' premium pricing, performance and scalability problems; substandard offline access functionality; inflexible public folders; and vulnerability to viruses and spam.
