Support for Future Versions of Exchange and Public Folders

LATEST NEWS: Public Folders continue to be supported in Exchange 2010.

The latest release of Microsoft Exchange 2010 continues to support Public Folders, although you have to enable them in your installation, it is not delivered with them turned on.

Overview

With SharePoint, there is a lot of speculation and confusion as to the future of Microsoft's plans for Exchange Public Folders. Millions of businesses have invested in and use Public Folders as a core part of their busines collaboration platform. The issue is like converting from gasoline engines to other energy sources, the process will be long and transitional so as to not leave business dead on the side of the road. While Microsoft has stated that SharePoint is their long term collaboration platform, Microsoft has committed to supporting public folders until 2016 or later.

See this Microsoft Exchange Team posting:

Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007 "include public folder support – with great new investments in manageability and improved storage costs. Both of these products will be fully supported for 10 years from the availability of E12 [Exchange 2007] – through at least 2016. You can continue to use Public Folders with full support throughout this time."

While certainly pushing SharePoint as the future, Microsoft is providing a long-range view where they "de-emphasize" public folders. Microsoft will continue to support Public Folders in the next major release of Exchange Server, after Exchange 2007. This means Public Folders will have full support for 10 years after the release of the next major release of Exchange Server.

Microsoft has gotten more realist due to real feedback from its customers. A recent article

"Users hold fast to public folders despite iffy future" states:

"The company has strongly suggested to customers that it should be moving to – or at the least launching any new collaborative data on -- Office SharePoint Server 2007. But lots of IT shops are postponing a transition because it costs money, and they say the public folders work just fine for today's purposes."

And in fact they have released a new feature to manage public folders in Exchange 2007. See more information at: "Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Resurrects Public Folder Management "

Our customers tell us their timeframe is driven by the reality of what it costs to change their primary collaboration platform - Exchange and Outlook. The change will cost alot in not only software but configuration, deployment and training. Even after all of that, there is a risk end-users will not accept the new application. For this reason we are realistic about the timeframe for migration and will proceed with a product strategy that supports the business reality.

Crow Canyon Strategy Forward

We fully intend to keep the Help Desk/Service Desk applications current with the latest Microsoft technologies, while also providing legacy support as needed. Exchange Server 2007 continues to fully support public folders while providing additional new management and functionality features.

With this in mind, we will continue to enhance our current products and offer a new Sharepoint based product line in late 2009. Those customers who want to move off Public Folders will be able to do so by migrating to the Sharepoint based product. You can be assured that if you purchase our products today, they will support your migration timeframe.

This strategy provides the best long term migration opportunity for our customers who wish to continue to enjoy the productivity gains and simplicity our products provide while not having to switch to a completely new product.

Our mission at Crow Canyon is to Develop simple yet highly productive applications leveraging the Microsoft collaboration technology. We are excited about the opportunity SharePoint provides, and will move to the new collaboration models that Microsoft is developing. We plan to be right in tune with Microsoft as they make their move and we will be providing migration paths and tools as necessary to do that.