Exchange 2010 Beta Released

Microsoft announced the release today of the Exchange 2010 public beta, which you can download from the new Exchange 2010 Technet Site.

The MS Exchange Team blog has a post about it too including some links to videos and other resources.  Meanwhile the Unified Communications blog also announced it and ran through a list of the some the new UC improvements that are included in Exchange 2010.

One in particular caught my attention:

Replace legacy voice mail systems. That’s right. Customers can eliminate costly maintenance fees, get more from IT resources, and boost productivity with Exchange 2010 voice mail with unified messaging – especially with the enhancements we’ve made to this version, such as the new voice mail text preview, so you can quickly triage voice mails without ever listening to the message).

Over a year ago I wrote a post about what I thought was a missing feature of Exchange 2007 UM – the lack of voicemail to text/email transcription for the hearing impaired.  If the new voice mail text preview feature transcribes the entire voicemail message then this would be a big accessibility improvement.

I’m downloading the beta today so expect to hear more from me about it in the coming days and weeks.