







Microsoft has several hits on its hands right now, particularly Windows 7, Office 2010, Xbox 360 and the Kinect hands-free controller.

A new survey of IT professionals finds Exchange 2010 migrations entering a growth phase.

However, a new survey suggests that one more mundane product, Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Exchange Server 2010, has quietly been picking up momentum as corporate customers increasingly embark on the move to the newest release of the company’s venerable e-mail engine.

The survey of some 590 attendees at last month’s Exchange Connections 2010 in Las Vegas, a conference for IT professionals, found Exchange 2010 is coming on strong. The survey was sponsored by unified e-mail management services vendor Mimecast.

In the year since it shipped, the Mimecast survey found 19.7 percent of respondents had already completed the migration to Exchange 2010.

An additional 51.9 percent said they will move to Exchange 2010 within the next 12 months, according to the Mimecast survey report. In fact, a total of 68 percent of those who took the survey said they plan to complete their migrations within two years. (Granted, the survey has an innate bias, as it was conducted at a Microsoft Exchange conference.)

That’s not to say that planning and executing Exchange 2010 deployments are necessarily always smooth or easy.

For example, half of the participants said their organizations are “juggling solutions from two or more providers for email archiving, continuity and

security. A full 20 percent have three or more offerings to manage,” the report said.

Of those who have already implemented Exchange 2010, the largest “anticipated benefit” (about 47 percent) was “enhanced availability,” closely followed by “easier administration” (about 32 percent).

Exchange Server 2010 initially shipped a little more than a year ago in November 2009 and was followed by Service Pack 1 (SP1) in August 2010.

The current version of the e-mail engine, Exchange 2007, is included in Microsoft’s cloud-based Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), Microsoft’s enterprise application services. Company officials have said that, next year, when Microsoft releases BPOS’s replacement, known as Office 365, it will be upgraded to include Exchange 2010 and the other 2010 servers.

Stuart J. Johnston is a contributing writer at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @stuartj1000.

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