If you’re an IT administrator or a corporate user of Microsoft’s Mac Outlook and Exchange Server products, you may be interested in a poll currently under way at Microsoft’s “Mactopia” Web site. The poll focuses on the future of Outlook and Exchange Server, with a stated goal of helping Microsoft plan “future products for the Macintosh.”
Outlook shouldn’t be confused with Outlook Express. Outlook Express is Microsoft’s “Classic” Mac OS Internet e-mail client, distributed for free with Mac OS 9 as part of the same package that includes Internet Explorer. Outlook, on the other hand, is a full-blown messaging and collaboration client. While it shares some common interface traits, Outlook sports a more robust feature set than Outlook Express does. It also requires Microsoft’s Exchange Server technology in order to work.
Because of Outlook and Exchange Server’s position as enterprise-level software, the poll itself is oriented towards IT professionals who use and administer the products, but there are some questions that users can answer too. The poll focuses on broad information about what sort of business and environment the software is being used in, as well as the company’s Mac OS X migration strategy and what sort of features are important for the software to have.