The msexchange team blog reports:

“Exchange 2010 is Code Complete and on its way to General Availability”.

The next version of MS-Exchange is expected to be released at the Tech-Ed Europe event on November 9.

David Sengupta sums it up on the Ferris Blog:

Exchange 2010 takes on several existing markets. Email archiving vendors will feel the impact of native archiving capabilities. SAN vendors will feel the hit from native support for low-cost storage. And geoclustering vendors will be impacted by mailbox replication technologies now in the box.

The most significant change is that Exchange 2010 facilitates cloud services. Web-based self service capabilities, high availability, and deeper web services support all enable Exchange in the cloud.

The big question is whether Exchange 2010 will see a spike in adoption. Exchange 2007 deployments have been less than stellar.

Microsoft announced yesterday the availability of the public beta for Exchange Server 2010. The software, which is only released for 64-bit Windows is available for download here. The official product release is slated for the second half of 2009.

The key areas for improvements of this release seem to focus on productivity and cost savings, by providing:

• Capabilities to mix on-premise and hosted services, while maintain the same capabilities
• Storage performance improvements and resulting cost reduction
• New compliance capabilities through built-in archiving and expanded user roles management
• Improving user productivity and inbox management/experience

I found particularly interesting the introduction of so called MailTips that help prevent end-user faux-pas, such as reply-to-all or accidentally sending mail to unintended recipients outside the company.  I’m curious to see the actual implementation, since misguided user tips can quickly get annoying – remember clippy.

Voicemail preview is also very cool – I’ve been using Phonetag as an external voice mail transcription service for over a year now and would not want to miss it.

WindowsITPro published this more detailed article highlighting other notable improvements.

Another chapter in the saga surrounding millions of missing White House emails was written this week, when judge John Facciola ordered the Bush administration to collect and preserve all emails stored in .pst files including data copied onto portable media such as flash drives.

While there are many theories about the missing emails, reaching from government conspiracy to sheer incompetence, I would side with the latter.

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Michael Vizard shares in unusual candor a sentiment in this eWeek article that may resonate well with many who are responsible for managing large Exchange environments.

“Within the land of IT, nothing is a bigger pain to own, manage and run than Microsoft Exchange. Everywhere you go customers have horror stories about the installation, maintenance and, above all, uptime of their Microsoft Exchange implementations. And worse yet, they will all tell you they are paying top dollar for the privilege because the expertise needed to successfully run a Microsoft Exchange server is some of the most expensive in the IT labor pool.”

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Today is the day that many gadget junkies have been waiting for – Apple’s iPhone is finally going on sale at AT&T wireless stores around the country. Much has been written and reported about its cool features and it will be interesting to see if the fever pitch media hype leading-up to its release can live up to the expectations and real world demands of the common cell phone user.

For many companies currently supporting corporate mobile email through services such as RIM’s Blackberry BES, Microsoft Mobile ActiveSync or Good Technology from Motorola a far different question arises: How will they support the iPhone on their existing infrastructure and what possible security risks does the device pose in the corporate context?

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Here is another take on “making email boring”- how corporate America is trying to deal with email overload. Some of you may have seen this story on ABC last Saturday.

U.S. Cellular CEO Jay Ellison is banning email on Fridays. Ironically, Ellison announced the measure in an email to all 5,500 employees:

“Get out to meet your teams face-to-face. Pick up the phone and give someone a call. … I look forward to not hearing from any of you, but stop by as often as you like.”

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