Overview

What's Covered

Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 is the smart choice for your company's long-term messaging and collaboration needs. It is the ideal platform for business-critical messaging, offers unmatched interoperability and openness, provides easy, low-cost administration, and contains powerful collaborative solutions.

Feature Highlights

Ideal Platform for Business-Critical Messaging
With unlimited storage capacity, built-in Simple Management Protocol (SMP) support, improved backup performance, and enhanced security management Exchange Server 5.5 is the best choice for your messaging foundation. You won't find a better performing, more scalable, more stable messaging platform on the market. Support for Microsoft Windows® NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition minimizes system downtime due to single-node failover support in Windows NT Enterprise Edition.

Industry-leading scalability. Unlimited storage capacity and SMP support in Exchange Enterprise Edition enable hosting thousands of users per server on Windows NT class hardware. Single instance message store maximizes disk utilization.
High performance. Native implementation of Internet standards provides the fastest MAPI, POP3, IMAP4, and NNTP server so your users can be working and not waiting for their server to respond.
High availability. Clustering support in Exchange Enterprise Edition keeps your server up and running in the event of a hardware failure so your business can stay online.
Most reliable. The Exchange Server transacted-based store and MTAs make sure that message delivery is reliable. You can always determine if your mail has reached its destination, and whether it was read. Least-cost routing and load balancing makes sure that your messages get through at the minimum cost to your organization.
Security. Your communication is secure whether internal to your organization or across the Internet. Exchange Server 5.5 offers unified Exchange and Windows NT logon, password expiration, and support for the latest encryption standards (including SSL, E/SMTP, SASL, S/MIME, and digital signatures).

Unmatched Interoperability and Openness
Exchange Server 5.5 is built on an architecture of Internet standards like SMTP, POP3, IMAP4, LDAP v3, and NNTP that enables you to choose the protocols you need, with high fidelity message delivery across a variety of clients. You also get unmatched connectivity with built-in connectors for Lotus Notes, IBM OfficeVision/VM, SNADS, Microsoft Mail, cc:Mail, Novell GroupWise, and X.400.

Multi-protocol architecture. Whether you need the full functionality of MAPI or an Internet standards-based solution, Exchange Server is the only system that enables you choose the protocols and the clients to best fit your needs without requiring add-on components.
Built-in Internet standards. With native SMTP/POP3, IMAP4, HTTP, LDAP v3, and NNTP, Exchange Server makes it easy to connect and share information with other clients and servers.
Notes interoperability. Exchange Server offers mail connectivity with Notes v3, Notes v4, and Domino v4.6 including RTF, OLE, and attachment support as well as Notes to Exchange Server directory synchronization.
Shared file systems interoperability. Shared file systems interoperability allow for Microsoft Mail and Lotus cc:Mail connectivity.
Host-based interoperability. Exchange Server provides migration and co-existence tools for the most common messaging environments PROFs, DEC All-In-One, and SNADs.
Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) connectivity. Exchange Server delivers integrated X.400, X.500, and X.25.
Scalable, compatible client family. In addition to Microsoft Outlook® 98 for the 32-bit version of Microsoft Windows®, Exchange Server includes Outlook versions for the 16-bit version of Windows, and the Macintosh to provide a consistent user interface and interoperable calendaring across platforms. Also included is Microsoft Outlook Web Access, which allows users to securely access their e-mail, calendar, contacts, and collaborative applications using any standard Web browser.

Easy, Low-Cost Administration
The integrated diagnostics, remote management, and flexible directory support in Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 provides the easiest setup, configuration, and administration on the market. In addition, Exchange Server continues to be the lowest cost client/server messaging solution available.

Integration with Windows NT. Tight integration with the Windows NT directory, common performance monitoring, and administrative tools simplify Exchange Server management and reduce cost of ownership. Exchange Server 5.5 delivers advance support of the Active Directory Service Interface to be delivered in Windows NT 5.0.
Cost of acquisition. Exchange Server 5.5 is the lowest cost client/server messaging solution available today.
Administration. Seventy percent of administrators prefer the powerful administration and unified graphical interface of Exchange Server and find it faster and easier to get their jobs done. WAN and RAS administration capabilities enable remote management as well.
Least-cost routing. Built-in, least-cost routing sends your messages throughout your organization following the lowest cost route. Intelligent re-routing supports failover of remote links.
Proactive monitors. Exchange Server 5.5 is the only system that delivers integrated monitoring that tells the status of the system and warns of potential problems before they occur so the appropriate actions can be taken. Integration with Windows NT Server allows the server and link monitors to reset Exchange Services on Remote Servers without you having to take action.
Flexible directory support. Administrators can create virtual organizations by creating multiple address containers that can be viewed only by members of the virtual organization, allowing multiple organizations to be hosted on the same server without being aware of each other.

Powerful Collaborative Solutions
Exchange Server 5.5 gives you the tools and technology to develop the widest range of collaborative solutions. Start with instant collaboration using Outlook 98, Microsoft Office 97, and the drag-and-drop Microsoft Exchange Server design environment, or build fully featured Web applications using standard Web tools such as Microsoft Visual InterDev™ or Microsoft Visual Studio™. Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 gives you the freedom to match your development solution to your business needs while taking advantage of the extended integration with other Microsoft BackOffice servers like Microsoft SQL Server™, Microsoft Systems Management Server, and Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS).

Instant collaboration. With Exchange Server 5.5, Outlook 98, and the Web, users can quickly and easily develop solutions to meet their needs to manage, share, and analyze information.
Active Server Pages. Exchange Server provides this Web-based approach to building collaboration solutions running on IIS and accessing services of Microsoft BackOffice® Server suite.
Exchange Scripting Agent. Now you can create event-driven solutions for automating business process using simple workflow.
Exchange Routing Objects and Routing Wizard. Using this simple point-and-click wizard, users can quickly create workflow-enabled solutions that take advantage of the rich capabilities of Exchange Server and Outlook. For developers, these objects provide a programming model so that you can build more advanced workflow-enabled solutions.
Real time collaboration. Chat Service and Internet Locator Server (ILS) extend the reach of your custom solutions to real time communication such as virtual meetings and real time application sharing.
Standard Web tools that leverage your existing investments. You can use Visual InterDev, new design-time controls included with Exchange Server, or the other tools in Visual Studio to build fully featured Web applications.
Collaboration Data Objects. Exchange Server exposes a rich set of services accessible using standard tools such as Microsoft Visual Basic® Scripting Edition to create collaborative solutions with features such as discussion groups, group calendaring, and robust messaging.
Integration with Office. You can leverage existing skills through tight integration with Microsoft Office 97.
Integration with Microsoft BackOffice®.
- Integration with SQL Server enables you to send messages triggered by SQL Server events. Exchange Scripting Agent enables automated data transfer between the Exchange and SQL stores.
- Integration with Systems Management Server enables you to deploy Exchange clients and Outlook clients easily to user desktops and to monitor the client software for upgrades.
- Integration with IIS using Collaboration Data Objects enables you to access all of the Exchange Resources with a Web browser.

Exchange Server 5.5 Components

Exchange Server 5.5 Standard Edition contains:

Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5
Microsoft Outlook 98 client
Microsoft Mail Connector
Internet Mail Service
Lotus cc:Mail Connector
Microsoft Exchange Connector
Lotus Notes Connector
Collaboration Data Objects
Internet News Service
Microsoft Visual InterDev
Microsoft Exchange Chat Service

Exchange Server 5.5 Enterprise Edition contains the components included in the Standard Edition plus:

Unlimited storage
X.400 Connector
IBM OfficeVision/VM/SNADS Connectors

System Requirements

Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 requires the following minimum system configuration:

Intel and Compatible Systems

System with an Intel Pentium 133 or faster processor
32 MB of RAM (64 MB for Enterprise Edition)
250 MB of free hard-disk space (500 MB recommended)

RISC-Based Systems

System with an Alpha processor
48 MB of RAM (64 MB for Enterprise Edition)
300 MB of free hard-disk space (500 MB recommended)

Additional Requirements For all Systems

Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0 and Windows NT Server version 4.0 Service Pack 3 or later
CD-ROM drive
Windows NT Server, Enterprise Edition, version 4.0 is required to enable Microsoft Cluster Server, support for more than four processor SMP systems, and support for greater than 2 GB RAM