Half of Exchange users still on 2003: survey

October 2, 2009:A survey of almost 800 IT administrators by, Metalogix Software, a US provider of email archiving solutions, found 50% are still using Exchange 2003.

The findingsshow that organisations have been cautious about migrating to Exchange 2007 and some will skip Exchange 2007 and await the release of Exchange 2010.

It also found that 48% of all Exchange users plan to upgrade their Exchange version this year, with 20% keen to make the leap to Exchange 2010 when it is available.

“Email has become today’s No. 1 business application and companies are hesitant to make any changes that might impact its performance,” said Chris Risley, CEO, Metalogix. “This has resulted in a relatively slow adoption rate of new versions of Exchange.”

Based on this trend data, Metalogix anticipates that the adoption rate of Exchange 2010 will not peak for at least two years. In the meantime, companies are rapidly adopting solutions to securely retain, protect and archive their email data.

Metalogix also recommends that those organizations planning to upgrade their Exchange environments implement an archiving solution first. This speeds the process by reducing the Exchange data size before migration.