Introduction to Exchange Server 2003 Server Consolidation

As e-mail messaging continues to grow in both volume and business importance, organizations are looking for new options to manage future demand in a reliable and cost-effective way.

One option is to build a messaging strategy based on advanced technologies available in Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. Enterprise-scale messaging servers are the key to reducing the overall number of servers, as well as the number of server sites in the organization, thus streamlining messaging infrastructure and lowering administrative overhead. Information Technology analysts suggest that server and site consolidation can help an organization to realize significant savings in operational costs.

In a recent study, META Group concludes that by accommodating more users per Exchange server, organizations can reduce operational costs by approximately $240,000 to $600,000 annually. For more information, see Exchange 5.5 Migration to Exchange 2003 Cost-Saving Scenarios.

For example, Microsoft upgraded to Exchange Server 2003, reducing 113 mailbox servers in 75 sites to 38 mailbox servers in seven geographical locations worldwide. The organization has approximately 85,000 users and manages approximately 3,500,000 internal e-mail messages and 2,500,000 Internet e-mail messages per day.

This example is not unique. Siemens is upgrading to Exchange 2003 and consolidating more than 150 Exchange organizations into a single organization. The window and door manufacturer, Pella, upgraded to Exchange 2003 and consolidated 16 Exchange servers to six Exchange servers. Timex upgraded to Exchange 2003 and consolidated its nine e-mail servers to only two e-mail servers.

Each of these examples demonstrates that organizations can benefit from site and server consolidation using Exchange 2003. If your organization includes multiple messaging systems, servers, or locations, you can benefit from a consolidation based on Exchange 2003.