Lion Nathan to adopt Exchange 2007

The rollout was announced this morning as part of Microsoft's Australian launch of its Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 products to the business market.

"Lion Nathan plans a full organisation-wide rollout of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007," the group's CIO Darryl Warren said in a statement issued by Microsoft. "This will significantly reduce our messaging server hardware and software licensing costs over the long term."

Lion Nathan will partner Exchange 2007 with the Outlook 2007 collaboration application, which Microsoft ships as part of Office 2007.

Microsoft's statement claimed Lion Nathan would consolidate 10 servers into three and give staff mobile access. Lion Nathan had initially conducted a trial with 100 users.

Meanwhile, in the same statement, Microsoft said accounting and consulting organisation BDO had run a pilot project of Office 2007, Windows Vista and Exchange 2007.

"BDO worked with Microsoft partner Ensyst to trial the technology with 50 users from across the firm, including the Corporate Finance business unit," said Microsoft's statement.

Despite Office 2007's radical new user interface, Granger claimed the interface was familiar, saying "it was essentially the tools we had been using, with a much greater level of functionality".

Microsoft's statement left unclear to what extent BDO was using the software in a more permanent project.

Approximately 86,000 beta versions of Vista and Office 2007 had been downloaded by Australians keen to try out the software before it was finalised, the software giant claimed.

At the launch, Microsoft executives promised the massive beta testing program has ensured its new products will contain fewer bugs than before.