Microsoft’s Exchange Server product is their flagship email and messaging platform for enterprises. It has a long history starting as far back as the early 1990s with the Microsoft Mail system and evolving into the Exchange product.
Microsoft Exchange is an enterprise class email storage and transport product with collaboration, calendaring, and presence features. Key features include:
- Mailboxes: User and non-user (e.g. shared, room, application, etc).
- Address Books
- Distribution and Mail-Enabled Security Groups
- Public Folders
- Security, Compliance, and Governance
Microsoft Exchange is deeply integrated into Microsoft Active Directory. Microsoft Active Directory is the backing store for Exchange’s Global Address List and all addressable objects in Microsoft Exchange must have an object in Active Directory.
The mail system supports enterprises of nearly any size from the very small to the extremely large. There are many world-wide organizations using Microsoft Exchange with an excess of 100,000 mailboxes, including Office 365’s version of Exchange Online.
