Messaging management policies help organizations comply with legal requirements and conserve information technology resources. In the past, it was difficult to enforce those policies and monitor user compliance. In addition, it was expensive and time-consuming to comply with legal discovery orders. Attempts to automate the messaging management process met with limited success. The MRM functionality in Exchange 2007 addresses these challenges.

The strategy to make Exchange 2007 messaging management and policy enforcement more reliable, effective, and easy-to-use is based on three principles:

• Users classify their own messages.
  
  
• Obsolete messages are removed.
  
  
• Required messages are retained.
  
  

MRM requires an Exchange Enterprise Client Access License (CAL) for each mailbox on which it is enabled. For more information about licensing and journaling, see the "Enterprise Licensing vs. Standard Licensing" section later in this topic.

For more information about MRM, see Managing Messaging Records Management.

Transport rules in Exchange 2007 let you apply messaging policies to e-mail messages that flow into, out of, or through your Exchange 2007 organization. These messaging policies let you modify the delivery or content of messages based on conditions that you specify.

Note:
Although transport rules can also be run on computers that run the Edge Transport server role, only transport rules that run on Hub Transport servers are designed for use in compliance scenarios.

Many organizations today are required by law, regulatory requirements, or company policy to apply messaging policies that limit the interaction between recipients and senders, both inside and outside the organization. The Transport Rules agent in Exchange 2007 provides the functionality that you must have to meet these requirements.

Transport rules are available with both the Exchange Enterprise CAL and the Exchange Standard CAL. For more information about licensing and journaling, see the "Enterprise Licensing vs. Standard Licensing" section later in this topic.

For more information about transport rules, see Overview of Transport Rules.

Journaling is the ability to record all communications, including e-mail communications, in an organization for use in the organization's e-mail retention or archival strategy.

For more information about journaling, see Overview of Journaling.

Premium Journaling

Standard Journaling

The availability of compliance features depends on whether you have purchased Exchange Enterprise CALs or Exchange Standard CALs. All the compliance features listed earlier are available to you if you have purchased Exchange Enterprise CALs. If you have purchased Exchange Standard CALs, you can use only the compliance features that are part of the Exchange Standard CAL. Table 1 shows which features are available for each type of CAL:

Table 1   Compliance features available for each type of CAL

If you want to use the advanced compliance features available with an Exchange Enterprise CAL, purchase the number of Exchange Enterprise CALs equal to the number of users who will be using the advanced compliance features. For example, if you have 1,000 mailboxes and plan to enable MRM on only 100 of those mailboxes, you only have to purchase 100 Exchange Enterprise CALs. The 900 remaining licenses can be Exchange Standard CALs. If you want to apply premium journaling to some of the same 100 mailboxes that were previously covered by the Exchange Enterprise CALs, you don't have to purchase additional licenses. However, if you want to apply MRM or premium journaling to more than the original 100 mailboxes, you must upgrade the appropriate number of Exchange Standard CALs to Exchange Enterprise CALs.

Note:
You can use either Exchange Enterprise CALs or Exchange Standard CALs with both Microsoft Exchange Server Enterprise Edition and Microsoft Exchange Server Standard Edition. For example, you can put mailboxes that require premium journaling, such as Exchange Enterprise CALs, on a computer that is running Exchange Standard Edition.

Note:
Other features of Exchange 2007 may require Exchange Enterprise CALs. You must purchase Exchange Enterprise CALs for each mailbox that uses an Exchange Enterprise CAL feature.

For more information about licensing, see Frequently Asked Questions.

Some compliance features are enhanced by or are also available as a service from Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services. Exchange Hosted Services is a set of four distinct hosted services:

• Hosted Filtering, which helps organizations protect themselves from e-mail-borne malware
  
  
• Hosted Archive, which helps them satisfy retention requirements for compliance
  
  
• Hosted Encryption, which helps them encrypt data to preserve confidentiality
  
  
• Hosted Continuity, which helps them preserve access to e-mail during and after emergency situations
  
  

These services integrate with any on-premise Exchange servers that are managed in-house or Hosted Exchange e-mail services that are offered through service providers. For more information about Exchange Hosted Services, see Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services.