Overview

Messaging servers cannot do very much unless clients connect to allow users to create and send messages. The range of clients available to Exchange continues to expand from the basic Exchange viewer released with Exchange 4.0 to everything from smart cell phones through PDAs to the Web browser, the most widespread client in terms of platform coverage.

Clients do much more than simply create and send messages. Most clients track tasks, appointments, and meetings as well. Some clients are customizable, ranging from the reasonably complete development possibilities in Outlook through simple disabling of feature sets as implemented in OWA.

From a design and deployment perspective, you have to understand the potential of each client from features through supported platforms as well as the implementation and support costs. Some worry about the protocols and application programming interfaces used to build clients, since they would like to select clients that are not going to be outdated and become unsupportable. While it is good to consider this point, in reality it is not an issue for two reasons. First, the decision to deploy client software is often highly influenced by the selection of desktop hardware and software. For instance, if you elect to upgrade desktops to Windows XP Professional, you will probably upgrade hardware as well and may find that the new PCs come with software already loaded or that a bundling deal includes new versions of office application suites. Users end up with the latest version of a browser, Internet mail...