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Lucid Nonsense

An Interesting Exchange

One of the new features that Apple announced with Snow Leopard is compatibility with Exchange 2007 servers for Mail, Address Book and iCal. Unfortunately Mac users have been stuck with fairly atrocious support for Exchange servers since Microsoft’s Mac OS 9 based Outlook for Mac was replaced with the OS X native Entourage. Unlike Outlook for Mac, Entourage failed to provide, and still does not support, native access to Exchange. Instead Entourage uses a combination of IMAP and WebDAV to provide a level of access to Exchange servers, generally with less than perfect compatibility and a few missing features. In addition to requiring IMAP to be running on the Exchange server, Entourage needs to be able to connect to Outlook Web Access as this service, accessed via WebDAV, is leveraged by Entourage to provide most of the access to data held on the Exchange server.

The mere mention of Outlook Web Access (OWA) can strike fear into the heart of people familiar with integrating Macs into an Exchange environment. Outlook on Windows doesn’t require OWA so some companies won’t have it turned on. Some companies will only have it accessible external to the network, for when users are away from their office PCs. Some companies may have it turned on but may not have it configured properly and of course then, to the Windows IT staff, it’s just a case of “the Macs being weird again” because “the PCs are all fine”. It is a bit irritating.

So, when Apple announced Exchange support in Snow Leopard, there was a collective sigh of relief from Mac admins. Apple licensed Microsoft’s ActiveSync for the iPhone and as a result the Exchange connectivity on the iPhone is great, ironically much better than it has ever been on Mac OS X. With the Snow Leopard announcement there was a lot of optimism; perhaps Mac OS X would have Exchange support on a par with the iPhone? Unfortunately when the Apple Snow Leopard page was posted the exchange support was listed with this information:

Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 built into Mail, Address Book, and iCal. Mac OS X uses the Exchange Web Services protocol to provide access to Exchange Server 2007

The first thing that jumped out of that statement when I read it, and I have been relieved to discover I wasn’t alone in this, was the word “Web”. The thought process was something along the lines of “Bugger, Web Access again”. Things aren’t quite reflective of my initial concerns however and Exchange Web Services is, fortunately, an entirely different kettle of fish to Outlook Web Access.

Accessing an Exchange Server in the way that Entourage does, with OWA, is a bit of a hack, Entourage actually has to do quite a lot of work to provide access this way, when really that should be down to the server. It works reasonably well considering what it’s doing, but it’s not particularly pretty. With Exchange 2007 Microsoft added a new “Business Logic Layer” that was designed to allow different clients to access the Exchange server in a fully compatible way, with the Exchange Server doing most of the work. Exchange Web Services is an API built on this new Business Logic Layer, as are ActiveSync and OWA in Exchange 2007 . Any clients using the EWS API to connect to Exchange 2007 servers will, because of this, have the same level of compatibility as some of Microsoft’s core Exchange components and at a level that should be refreshingly familiar to iPhone users currently using ActiveSync to connect to their Exchange email server.

So Snow Leopard is looking pretty promising for Mac users, and Mac admins alike, when it comes to talking to Exchange servers. Of courses it will require the Exchange servers to be running 2007, which sadly will probably rule most of our customers out for the next few years, but it’s something to look forward to at least! Microsoft Entourage fans won’t be left out from the changes either, while Entourage doesn’t use EWS for most functions yet, even when connected to a 2007 server, there is a, currently full, beta program for Entourage that adds EWS support, and suggests that an update for Entourage to use the new system won’t too much of a wait.