Entourage Support in HMC 4/Exchange 2007

[ds]

Will tehre be any enhancements with entourage in exchange 2007 and how
compatible will it be with HMC 4 for the multi tenanted hosted exchange
environment. I have a lot of clients who use this in HMC 3.5 on
exchange 2003 and am concerned about the upgrade path and whether HMC 4
will support entourage users.
Any ideas?

 

[William Smith]

Will tehre be any enhancements with entourage in exchange 2007 and how
compatible will it be with HMC 4 for the multi tenanted hosted exchange
environment. I have a lot of clients who use this in HMC 3.5 on
exchange 2003 and am concerned about the upgrade path and whether HMC 4
will support entourage users.
Any ideas?

Hi Dan!

While I'm not familiar with the new features in HMC 4, what in
particular are your Mac users using in HMC 3.5 that you're afraid of
losing?

Entourage already supports Exchange connectivity, albeit not as
comprehensively as Outlook for Windows. This connectivity is via HTTP
over WebDAV, which is what OWA uses. So long as OWA is supported then
Entourage should be able to connect.

And Messenger for Mac (the latest version is 6.01) is Microsoft's Mac
client for Live Communications Server. Messenger is integrated with
Entourage and Word. SharePoint services has never been integrated into
any part of Office. I'm not sure if Microsoft feels enough demand exists
to do this. Macs should always be able to use basic SharePoint web
services (uploading, downloading, etc.)

Earlier this year Microsoft announced a new five-year commitment to the
Mac platform and that's essentially Office for Mac. I would speculate
that continued basic support will still be available.

Hope this helps! bill

 

[ds]

Thanks.

I guess what I would like to know is whether the new features of
exchange 2007 will be rolled out into OWA and then entourage updated
accordingly. And whether this is a opportunity for the entourage
solution to be enhanced. We have already seen that we have to apply a
patch the HMC3.5 so it works with Vista. I am a little concerned that
the entourage users may get lost in the mailstrom.

We have approx 1000 entourage users working with our hosted exchange so
we have to ensure we can continue to support them. It is an uphill
battle to get anything out of our Microsoft representives in the UK
about Entourage but it is a growing niche market for us.

 

[William Smith]

Thanks.

I guess what I would like to know is whether the new features of
exchange 2007 will be rolled out into OWA and then entourage updated
accordingly. And whether this is a opportunity for the entourage
solution to be enhanced. We have already seen that we have to apply a
patch the HMC3.5 so it works with Vista. I am a little concerned that
the entourage users may get lost in the mailstrom.

We have approx 1000 entourage users working with our hosted exchange so
we have to ensure we can continue to support them. It is an uphill
battle to get anything out of our Microsoft representives in the UK
about Entourage but it is a growing niche market for us.

Hi Dan!

I wish I could allay your fears but unfortunately we won't know anything
until the next version of Entourage has been released or at least until
Microsoft makes an announcement about feature support. We should be able
to safely assume that Exchange support will continue.

Will it improve? Exchange support has been aggressively improving since
it was introduced in Office X. We now have shared folders, the ability
to view folder properties, better Public Folder support and better
support for delegation. I would hope Microsoft will continue to be as
aggressive with their support of future versions of Entourage as they
have been demonstrating the past couple of years.

bill