The next version of Exchange, E14, is in beta as part of Microsoft’s Live@EDU service. When it will go RTM is anybody’s guess. Rumors have been spilled that E14 will go RTM in October 2009, but there is no telling when it will actually drop.

Also in 2010, we’ll be facing the need to move our Exchange environment to a new data center. Plus, it would be nice to move the underlying OS from Windows Server 2003 to Server 2008 (2003 HA clusters can’t be upgraded in-place to 2008).  I’ve been busily scheming to formulate devious plans which would allow us to accomplish both without an extensive outage or mass mailbox moves.  Hint:  it involves Standby Continuous Replication.  Of course, any such schemes that I concoct now are subject to change once Microsoft finally announces the details of E14, including upgrade paths and supported configurations.  They have been mum on both subjects thus far.

So, what will we get with E14?  The biggest feature announced thus far is cross-platform support for OWA Premium, which would be of great benefit to the many Mac users in our environment (including me).