While Service Pack 1 for Exchange Server 2010 captured most of the buzz at Microsoft’s TechEd 2010 conference earlier this month, for many IT departments the news of most interest to them was the Redmond software maker’s announcement about another service pack, one for Exchange Server 2007.

Microsoft told its faithful at the conference that Service Pack 3 for Exchange Server 2007 would be ready at the end of this month. The service pack is needed to make Exchange 2007 compatible with Windows Server 2008 R2.

Windows Server 2008 R2, the server variant of Windows 7 and Microsoft’s only 64-bit only operating system, reached retail shelves in October 2009. When the server software was released to manufacturers in July of that year, however, Microsoft declared the operating system would not be supporting Exchange 2007. That Draconian decision produced ululations from many in the company’s user base, some who believed Microsoft was leveraging Server 2008 to coerce companies to move to its latest mail management application Exchange 2010.

The official word from Microsoft as to why it was choking off Exchange 2007 from Server 2008 was lack of resources. It asserted that it was pulling out all the stops on bringing online Exchange 2010, and it didn’t want to dissipate those efforts on a legacy technology like Exchange 2007. While Server 2008 R2 would support Exchange 2007′s domain controllers, the company said at the time, the mail application itself won’t be supported on the server software. Anyone who wants to upgrade to Server 2008 R2, it added, will have to bite the bullet and move to Exchange 2010.

The announcement to abandon Exchange 2007 users who wanted to upgrade to Server 2008 R2 didn’t surprise pundits, but that didn’t dampen the uproar that ensued. For an IT administrator, stepping up to a new operating system like Server 2008 R2 is challenging enough, but to add to that burden another major upgrade, one to  another email program, was not going to win Microsoft any happy points with info tech stalwarts.

Walking away from legacy products always causes grumbling in a company’s user base so a company like Microsoft must be inured to a certain degree of that kind of grousing. This time, though, they apparently miscalculated just how loud the howls of protest would be and how deep the dissatisfaction would run. Faced with that kind of resistance, Microsoft blinked, although it did give its decision its own inimitable spin. Writing last November in a company blog, Kevin Allison, general manager for Exchange customer experience, noted:

“We always talk about listening to customers and sometimes this is written off by many as ‘marketing speak’. In fact, we do take feedback seriously and no input is more important to our engineering processes than your voice.

“Earlier this year we made a decision in one direction, and due to the feedback we have received on this blog and elsewhere, we have reconsidered. In the coming calendar year we will issue an update for Exchange 2007 enabling full support of Windows Server 2008 R2. We heard from many customers that this was important for streamlining their operations and reducing administrative challenges, so we have changed course and will add R2 support. We are still working through the specifics and will let you know once we have more to share on the timing of this update.

“So, keep the feedback coming. We are listening.”

No doubt, Microsoft’s capitulation brought on a sigh of relief from administrators, but those looking for a quick fix to the situation soon discovered it wasn’t coming. Writing shortly after tossing in the towel on Server 2008 R2 support of Exchange 2007, Allison explained that Microsoft may have miscalculated what kind of wherewithal it needed to make the programs play nice together.

“While we had hoped to add this application/operating system combination quickly, unfortunately adding this support requires code changes to setup in Exchange 2007,” he scribbled. “Therefore, our vehicle for adding this support will be via a third Service Pack for Exchange 2007 in the second half of calendar year 2010.”

The arrival of SP3 for Exchange 2007 will make things easier for administrators, but the process before them will remain complex because Microsoft played the short resources card again and says it will not provide in-place upgrades for servers running under Exchange 2007. And, of course, it recommends that organizations that have not installed Exchange 2007 to skip that iteration of the mail program entirely and go directly to Exchange 2010.