NetIQ streamlines migration to, management of Exchange Server 2007

NetIQ, an Attachmate business, today announced its latest technologies to support complete life cycle management of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, the backbone infrastructure for critical enterprise messaging services and unified communications initiatives.

As enterprises look to upgrade or adopt this critical messaging technology, NetIQ Exchange Migrator 7.0 and NetIQ Directory and Resource Administrator (DRA) 8.1 with NetIQ Exchange Administrator 8.1 allow enterprises to quickly migrate to this platform and easily manage it, without adding additional complexity or incurring costly downtime.

"With the introduction of Exchange Server 2007, we had anticipated a huge learning curve for our IT organisation. Creating large numbers of privileged accounts and successfully delegating administrative duties are only some of the challenges we expected to face with this entirely new architecture," said Larry Amerman, IS Security Administrator at Enbridge.

"NetIQ's Directory and Resource Administrator will eliminate these challenges, enabling our team to granularly delegate the management of Exchange without learning complex scripting, easing their burden and simplifying our transition to Exchange Server 2007."

Few native tools exist to aide administrators' adoption of Exchange Server 2007 and the lack of a formalised migration process can lead to inefficient delegation of permissions, potential IT audit conflicts, and the proliferation of privileged accounts that compromise both the security and compliance posture of the entire organisation.

Exchange Migrator 7.0 overcomes the pain points commonly associated with transitioning to Microsoft's latest messaging infrastructure from Exchange 5.5, Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 platforms. With advanced planning and modelling capabilities and customisable, offline migration of user mailboxes, contacts and distribution lists, Exchange Migrator provides a streamlined migration process to ensure a successful online transition. Moreover, it ensures messaging services remain available throughout the process to prevent unnecessary interruptions to end-user productivity.

The latest version of DRA with Exchange Administrator 8.1 extends DRA's role-based administration capabilities to manage Exchange Server 2007, providing IT teams with the ability to delegate permissions without assigning privileged native accounts to manage users, their mailboxes, contacts and distribution lists. By placing an interface between administrators and the complexities of Exchange 2007's new management interfaces, organisations can safely delegate tasks to less-experienced administrators, while maintaining a view of audit changes across their environment. Moreover, organisations are able to more easily manage mixed Exchange 5.5, 2000 and 2003 environments, which commonly exist during migrations and are prone to major administrator errors when using native tools.

"E-mail is the backbone of business and organisations want to keep this business service highly productive and available at all costs. This is particularly salient as they evaluate how to leverage this service as the core for unified communications strategies that ultimately increase their reliance on this critical infrastructure," said Todd Tucker, director of Product Marketing at NetIQ.

"With Exchange Migrator 7.0 and DRA 8.1 with Exchange Administrator 8.1, NetIQ is delivering a complete solution to safely transition organisations to this next-generation technology while ensuring service continuity and ongoing organisation productivity."

Pricing and availability: NetIQ Directory & Resource Administrator 8.1 with Exchange Administrator 8.1 is available worldwide today, with pricing starting at $16 per user. NetIQ Exchange Migrator is currently offered under controlled availability, with general availability scheduled for mid-October 2007. Pricing begins at $10 per migrated mailbox. For more information, please visit www.netiq.com or call NetIQ at (888) 323 6768.