View from the field: Exchange 2010 adoption

Since Exchange Server 2010 has been on the street for a few months now, data is beginning to trickle in on the adoption rates of the new platform.  While there are many very-well constructed polls and surveys out there, I’ve had the privilege of talking to many clients about their future plans, and these are my – horrifically unscientific – results of those conversations.

1 – Exchange 2010 is on nearly everyone’s radar.  Universally, every organization I’m talking to is actively planning out what they will be doing with Exchange 2010.

2 – But, most folks are not moving just yet.  About 8 of every 10 organizations I talk with are looking to begin their migration no sooner than Q4 of this year. Most are looking at Q2 of 2011 as their start-date.  A few here and there are indeed moving already, but not the majority.

3 – The migration curve of Exchange 2010 is moving much faster than it did for Exchange 2007.  I have a couple of theories as to why this is happening:

A – Exchange 2003 is going to be end of life soon.  Mainstream Support ends in April, 2009 according to the Support Lifecycle FAQ. Support for Exchange 2000 has already ended.

B – Most clients were in the process of rolling out (or just about to roll out) Exchange 2007 this year.  Since the Roles and overall framework of Exchange is very similar, it was easy to adapt these plans and roll out Exchange 2010 instead.

Overall, I’m guessing it will take about half as much time for Exchange 2010 to reach wide adoption as it took for Exchange 2003 or 2007.

4 – More clients are planning on jumping from Exchange 2003 to 2010 than were considering going from 2003 to 2007.  Many of the clients I’m talking with were not in a hurry to move to Exchange 2007, but are now actively planning their move to 2010.

While this is no way a good overall analysis of the Exchange market (as I’m only speaking with a few dozen clients a month about this), I’d be interested to see how this informal review matches up with formal polls and surveys over time.  If I am allowed to quote any of those formal studies here, I will, so we can track how accurate I was =)