5.9 OWA for all

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Can you throw away Outlook and replace it with OWA? Probably not, if your user community has become used to the way Outlook works and exploits some of the features not supported by OWA, such offline access. Outlook 2003, especially operating in cached Exchange mode, performs better from a user perspective especially if you tend to switch between folders frequently and the folders contain many messages. This kind of activity exposes the Achilles Heel of OWA because it demands heavy client-server communications whereas Outlook can exploit its local cache. Nevertheless, OWA offers a very real alternative to companies that want to deploy Exchange to serve user communities without going through the pain of client deployment and maintenance.

OWA is very useful even if you are quite happy with Outlook. OWA provides a great way to connect when Outlook is not available, such as when traveling, at home, or when using someone else's PC. OWA is also tremendously valuable when you have an unreliable or slow network connection that cannot support the network traffic generated by Outlook. For example, if you use a telephone link to connect Outlook to an Exchange server, the client and server exchange a substantial amount of bytes to establish context, check reminders, and so on. If the link disconnects and you reconnect, roughly the same traffic flows across the line to reestablish context. In comparison, if you use OWA and the line disconnects, you can reconnect and begin working again almost immediately. Outlook 2003 has made great improvements in usability, performance (cached Exchange mode) and flexibility (RPC over HTTP connections), but OWA has also improved so it is a ding-ding battle between the two as to which is the more efficient client.

There is no doubt that Microsoft has improved support for browser clients enormously since its initial effort in 1996. Microsoft continues to expend substantial development effort on OWA, so it will be interesting to see how the OWA versus. Outlook debate evolves over the next few years.



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Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Administrators Pocket Consultant
ISBN: 0735619786
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 188

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