Microsoft rolls out Exchange Server 2016

Microsoft's newest release of Exchange Server, Exchange Server 2016, is beginning to roll out to customers, starting today, October 1.

Microsoft made a public preview of Exchange 2016available to testers in July. Today, Microsoft is making the final bits available to its volume licensees, officials said, as well as releasing a 180-day evaluation version of the full product available for anyone to download.

The new Exchange includes a number of features that are already part of Exchange Online and Office 365, and is an evolutionary upgrade to Exchange Server 2013. Data Loss Prevention, managed availability, automatic recovery from storage failures and an improved web-based Exchange admin center are all part of the latest release.

As part of Exchange Server 2016, Microsoft also made a number of updates to Outlook on the Web (the web version of the Outlook client) as part of the new release, with the goal of making its different versions of Outlook more alike. Exchange 2016 users will get Sweep, Pin, Undo,

Microsoft also is touting improved search and simplified document sharing as new top features.

"Exchange 2016 will follow the same servicing rhythm as Exchange 2013, with Cumulative Updates (CUs) released approximately every three months that contain bug fixes, product refinements, and selected new investments from Office 365," said officials in a blog post announcing product availability. "The CUs will include features such as search indexing from passive that we decided needed additional refinement or validation before arriving on-premises. The first CU will arrive in the first quarter of 2016."

The Exchange Server 2016 product guide is here. The product documentation is on TechNet.