Simon Barratt

How many bits to Exchange?

I just picked up an interesting piece about Exchange 12 on Ed's blog, it appears that the next version of Exchange (currently called E12) will only be available as a 64 bit application.

I then validated this claim through the Microsoft Press Pass RSS feed and associated press release.

Muglia made several product announcements during his keynote address:
To help customers take full advantage of the power of 64-bit computing, products including Microsoft® Exchange Server “12,” Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, Windows Server™ “Longhorn” Small Business Server, and Microsoft’s infrastructure solution for midsize businesses, code-named “Centro,” will be exclusively 64-bit and optimized for x64 hardware.

This is quite a change from what MS has been saying.  It almost seems to me that we will be adopting Exchange just as it is becoming obsolete, and will then be faced with what looks, and sounds, like a serious upgrade to a whole new platform!  Past Exchange upgrades have proved difficult enough without the added complexity of mixing different processor technologies!