Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, will extend rights-managed e-mail to browsers

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 is officially launched for sale this morning in a TechEd conference in Berlin.Microsoft Exange Sever 2010 is a system for mail administrators to implement policy-driven rights management for Outlook 2010 (Office) users, but also for the users of the Outlook Web App running through Web browsers, including Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox.

Its special management features, called Transport Protection Rules, will enable admins to generate extensive rules that restrict, an e-mail recipient’s ability to make alternate uses of the content of e-mail,if messages are deemed confidential, including copying and pasting its text elsewhere.During this morning’s demo, Corporate Vice President Stephen Elop and Exchange product manager Julie White showed how OWA enables the e-mail client to prohibit unrestricted use of an e-mail’s content if the sender flags the mail as confidential. Transport Protection Rules, enables the creation of a policy restriction template that may be applied whenever any content sent from a specified account meets the criteria. That criteria includes the inclusion of phrases within the content of the mail.

The demo showed that TPR can be designed, where a rule can search outgoing content for the specific phrase, and if that phrase is located, Exchange can apply the confidentiality rule that the original sender may have neglected to apply. The message becomes onfidential because the restrictions, including inability to copy and paste text or to forward the message to other recipients, may be enforced on non-Microsoft browsers including Firefox.In fact, TechEd attendees saw more of Firefox than Internet Explorer this morning.

White said “Integrated information rights management is now natively supported within Outlook Web App,” White further said “so that now users can create protected messages without needing an additional plug-in, or taking any extra steps. And that means fewer support desk calls for the admins.”

So some of the other features execs showed off in conference ended up being old news to many, including how Exchange and OWA implement, the ability to automatically categorize e-mails, based on their subject lines, and the “Ignore Conversation” feature, which skip future messages belonging to unwanted conversations.

Cisco announced its own Unified Communications System 8.0 platform update, which integrates a new toolkit and a hosted e-mail option, in the same morning,which is putting Cisco in direct competition with Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes.