Are public folders going away?

Microsoft has “de-emphasized” public folder systems in Exchange 2007 in favor of SharePoint integration for both desktops and Outlook Web Access.  While that looked like a great idea in the initial release, a combination of user push back and the lack of public folder to SharePoint conversion tools has lead MSFT to put significant public folder management tools back in to 2007 with the release of Service Pack 1.

So, are public folders here to stay?  It would seem that many users sill rely on them for communication and sharing files, but that can be problematic in many ways.  First off, it increases the size of the Exchange Server’s data stores - often dramatically.  It also makes finding things that are squirreled away in public folders much more difficult than finding the same objects in a SharePoint system.  SharePoint indexes files and folders much more effectively, and does so without creating overhead on the email/calendar/contact management systems to boot.

Yet, with the intense reliance on public folders in the Exchange world today, even though it would be better and more effective to jump to SharePoint in 2007, the vast majority of Exchange users did not, and rallied to get MSFT to put those functions back into the product.

This desire to stay on public folders was only enhanced by the lack of tools designed to help migrate off public folder-based systems.  There are a few great tools out there, but nowhere near the level of systems designed to, say, migrate from Lotus Notes or other mail systems.  Without the ability to get the existing public folder data into some other software package like SharePoint, most existing Exchange users will find the migration a horrific uphill climb.

Finally, there will always be end-users resistant to change. With email, calendars and contact, you can leave your users with applications they already know - such as Outlook 2003.  But with public folders, users that are used to working with Outlook will often be resistant to learning how to navigate and use SharePoint and other tools.  This may be the biggest reason that Public Folders are not going anywhere fast, no matter how much MSFT threatens to pull them from the next version(s) of Exchange.