Entourage to Exchange Web Services (EWS) Open to Public

Microsoft Tuesday launched a public beta for software that ties Mac users more closely to Exchange mail servers, making good on a promise the company announced earlier this month.

A beta of the Entourage to Exchange Web Services (EWS) client software is now open to the public, said Mike Tedesco, a senior product manager for the company's Mac development group. Previously, the beta had been tested by a handful of corporations running Exchange server and Office 2008 for Mac.

EWS allows the Exchange server itself do most of the heavy lifting, as opposed to WebDAV, which left the bulk of the work up to the client. This results in as much as a 2x speed increase. Also, the improved compatibility means that tasks, notes, and categories are now synced with the server, names can be resolved from the Global Address List over standard HTTP connections (no more VPN!), and improved Autodiscover keeps account settings synced with your Exchange server.

With the beta, Microsoft is moving away from the WebDAV protocol it's used for the last five years to connect Entourage, the e-mail client included in the Mac version of Office, to Exchange, the popular enterprise mail server software. Rather than rely on Web DAV, the beta supports Exchange's native connectivity protocol through an API, putting Entourage on a more equal footing with Microsoft's Windows-based Outlook e-mailer when it comes to synchronizing with Exchange.

Apple licensed Microsoft's ActiveSync technology last March to give iPhone users a way to grab business e-mail from Exchange servers.

The beta also adds some new functionality to Entourage, said Tedesco, including synchronizing tasks, notes and categories in the e-mail program with Exchange.

Users interested in trying the beta of Entourage to Exchange Web Services can apply on the Microsoft Connect site, said Tedesco, but must be running Office 2008 for Mac as well as Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 with Update Rollup 4, or later.

Source: http://www.techworld.com.au/article/273747/microsoft_unveils_mac--exchange_sync_beta