Microsoft shared features and timing for the second service pack for its Exchange 2010 product during its TechEd 2011 conference on May 17.
SP2 will be out in the second half of calendar 2011, according to Microsoft execs. The SP will include 500 or so bug fixes, plus at least four new features, officials told TechEd attendees. (After years of hearing Microsoft execs say service packs were meant for bug fixes only, Microsoft is back to saying “service packs these days are about bugs AND features.”)
Among the new features that will be in SP2, according to a new blog post on the Exchange Team blog are:
Outlook Web App (OWA) Mini: The browse-only version of OWA for low-bandwidth and low-resolution devices. (It’s basically OMA revisited, a Microsoft exec told show attendees and provides a simple text-based interface to navigate mailboxes and access global address lists.)
Hybrid Configuarion Wizard: A tool designed to streamline the process of setting-up on-premises Exchange and Office 365 and getting them to work together in hybrid mode.
Address Book Policies (also known as Global Address List, or GAL, Segmentation): Allows organizations to segment their address books into smaller scoped subsets of users providing a more refined user experience than the previous manual configuration approach.
Cross-Site Silent Redirection for Outlook Web App: Enables silent redirection when the client-access server (CAS) must redirect an OWA request to CAS infrastructure located in another Active Directory site. Silent redirection can also provide a single sign-on experience when Forms-Based Authentication is used.
Exchange 2010 SP2 also will include “customer requested fixes,” which means update rollups released prior to Service Pack 2 will also be contained within SP2.
Microsoft shipped Exchange 2010 SP1 in August 2010.
Blogger Steven Bink first reported Microsoft’s plans for Exchange SP2, and has some additional details in his post.
