Microsoft said Thursday that it has finalized the code for Exchange 2010, the next version of its e-mail and communications server.
Exchange 2010, which has been ahead of the rest of the Office family in development, becomes the first of the Office 2010 wave of products to be finished.
"Our senior leadership team has signed off on the final code, and it has been sent to our early adopters for one final look before its public release.," Microsoft said in a blog posting.
The product will become broadly available in November, Microsoft, said with a launch planned for the TechEd Europe conference, which runs Nov. 9-13 in Berlin. Other parts of Office 2010, such as the new versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook, are not due until next year, with a beta slated for later in 2009.
Among the features in the next Exchange is an ability to ignore a particular e-mail conversation, as well as "MailTips," which offers warnings when one might be about to commit an e-mail faux pas.
Microsoft developed Exchange 2010 as a service first, using it to power its Live@edu mail service and then worked to create the server version of the software--a reversal of the past way Exchange and other products have been created.