MS Exchange gets a price tag

The Microsoft product that some thought might never ship now has a price.

Microsoft this week unveiled the cost of Exchange Server, which the company is releasing this month after nearly two years of delays.

Exchange Server is Microsoft's client/server messaging system, a more reliable and scaleable replacement to the Microsoft Mail email system. On top of serving more users faster, Exchange also adds groupware functions like group scheduling and electronic forms. The Exchange client shipped as part of the Windows 95 operating system last August.

Exchange Server will cost $529, with an additional charge of $54 per client license, according to the company. This price is based on a minimum volume purchase of three servers and 50 clients.

Microsoft will also sell optional software for connecting Exchange Server to the world outside corporate LANs. The Internet Mail Connector for Net email will cost $377 per server, and an X.400 Connector for hooking into X.400 messaging services will cost $757 per server. Microsoft Exchange Connector, which keeps data synchronized between multiple Exchange servers, will cost $377 per server.

A version of the server, called Exchange Server Enterprise Edition, with this entire suite of connectivity software included, will sell for $1,970.

Most large corporate purchasers will buy Exchange through Microsoft's Select Program for site licenses, which cover all users for a given location or company and can lower the per-user price of the software.

During the final few weeks of the company's beta program, Microsoft has announced the names of a series of large corporate sites in the process of deploying Exchange. For example, Microsoft announced that airplane manufacturer Boeing will be deploying 65,000 Exchange seats on its networks.

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MS Exchange due this month