Microsoft Exchange Server last week got the green light to be used in the US Defense Message System, opening up a market segment that microsoft estimates at more than 2 million seats and as much as $2bn in sales over time. The company said that it has already got 70,000 seats through back orders from various branches of the military, who were waiting for the final go-ahead from the Joint Interoperability Test Center, the outfit responsible for certifying message system compliance with the government’s 1988 X.400 P1 standard. Microsoft also hopes that the approval will result in lots of NT sales, and it says that it is going to include a copy of Internet Information Server and Explorer with each copy of the specially configured Exchange DMS, using a special DMS client and the standard Exchange Server. The product becomes the only off-the-shelf messaging software that has passed the government tests, but Microsoft doesn’t quite have a clear field. Exchange, which Lockheed Martin Federal Systems is going to sell to government accounts, has to compete with a modified version of Novell Inc’s Netware 3.4, certified with a replacement X.400 stack dubbed Firefox and marketed by E-Systems, as well as the Messageware Mail Server for SunOS 4.1.2 from the UK-based Nexor Ltd.
