Microsoft Exchange continues to outpace Notes

Microsoft Corporation announced this week that its Exchange Serverelectronic mail and messaging system outsold Lotus Notes in the firstquarter of 1999, once again beating its main rival by a wide margin.Microsoft licensed 4.6 million seats of Exchange Server worldwide, comparedto 3.8 million for Lotus Notes, a margin of over 800,000 seats. The companysays that almost 30 million seats have been licensed since the product wasfirst introduced in 1996.

The momentum for Exchange is likely to continue as Microsoft preps to bigmilestones for the product: The conversion of over 70 million HotMailmailboxes to Exchange and the introduction of the next major version, dubbed"Platinum." Exchange 6.0 "Platinum" will run on the Windows 2000 platformand integrate tightly with Active Directory. It is expected to becomeavailable within three months of the release of Windows 2000