Overview of Exchange Server 2003

Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 builds on the Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server code base, providing many new features and improvements in areas such as reliability, manageability, and security.

Exchange Server 2003 is the first Exchange release designed to work with Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003. Running Exchange 2003 on Windows Server 2003 provides several benefits, such as improved memory allocation, reduced Microsoft Active Directory® directory service replication traffic, and rollback of Active Directory changes. Running Exchange 2003 on Windows Server 2003 also allows you to take advantage of new features, such as the Volume Shadow Copy service and cross-forest Kerberos authentication. Exchange 2003 also runs on Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server Service Pack 3 (SP3) or later.

Exchange 2003 works with Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 to provide a range of improvements, such as cached mode synchronization, client-side performance monitoring, and support for RPC over HTTP (which allows users to connect directly to their Exchange server over the Internet without needing to establish a virtual private network (VPN) tunnel).

When combined with Windows Server 2003 and Outlook 2003, Exchange 2003 provides a robust, feature-rich end-to-end messaging system that is both scalable and manageable.