Eastside Business News at EastsideBusiness.com

Microsoft Corp.'s Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) today announced availability of Office 2004 for Mac Service Pack 2 (SP2), introducing significant enhancements to enterprise collaboration. A result of the Mac BU's close work with its corporate customers, SP2 delivers new features to boost Microsoft Exchange Server support in Entourage 2004. In addition, SP2 provides updates across all Office 2004 for Mac applications to help improve overall product security and address top issues identified by Microsoft and its Mac users.

"As a longtime Microsoft customer, we consistently have a positive experience with Mac BU products and were eager to test the Office 2004 for Mac SP2 beta," said Joe Stevano, senior systems administrator for Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc. "Our day-to-day operations depend on seamless collaboration throughout the organization, so we held off on switching to Entourage because we needed a more robust Exchange Server e-mail client for Macs. We've benefited from the improved Exchange support in SP2 over the past couple of months, and the last barrier to a full Entourage deployment has been removed. We'll soon make Entourage the default e-mail and calendar application for all of our Mac users."

SP2 expands on the Exchange Server functionality built into Entourage 2004 to deliver deeper support and help provide Mac users in an Exchange Server environment with the necessary tools for effective and efficient collaboration. Mac enterprise customers can benefit from improvements that help enable better e-mail and calendar management, enhanced public folder support, and faster client-server synchronization. Users also can experience improved access to the Global Address List (GAL), including the ability to browse the entire contents of the GAL and see full organizational detail. In addition, enhanced delegate access enables new setup entirely through Entourage without having to go through the Outlook(R) client on a PC.

"Being able to work so closely with other teams at Microsoft puts us in an ideal position to meet the collaboration needs of our Mac customers," said Scott Erickson, director of product management and marketing for the Mac BU at Microsoft. "For SP2, we worked with the Exchange Server team so that together we can help our enterprise customers collaborate seamlessly across platforms. We're in constant communication with our customers, and we're acting on their requests for improved tools and a better Entourage experience."

SP2 also includes cumulative security updates and prioritized fixes for issues identified by Microsoft and through customer feedback. The Mac BU monitors and receives customer feedback through customer support calls and tools such as Microsoft Error Reporting Protocol, which provides bug data anonymously.

SP2 is available in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish. Customers will be notified and may download SP2 via Microsoft AutoUpdate beginning later today, or can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/mac .

The enhancements to Exchange Server support for Entourage 2004 are compatible with Exchange 2000 and higher. Some organizations working in an Exchange Server environment may require the deployment of Update for Exchange 2003 (KB 888619) or Update for Exchange 2000 (KB 892896), both of which are available from Microsoft AutoUpdate or from the Microsoft Download Center. Information technology managers can find more information for system requirements at http://www.microsoft.com/mac/resources/resources.aspx?pid=resourcekits .