Exchange 2010 SP1 announced!

Over at the MS Exchange team blog, there is a new post announcing Exchange 2010 SP1.

The major highlights of this are:

1. Archive mailboxes can be in different databases. For larger organizations, this means the archive data can be allocated to cheaper/slower disk subsystems for the less frequently used data. This was a pretty big request they have fulfilled and I am sure many customers will be happy to hear this. Elan Shudnow has a really nice article on how to use/implement this new feature.
2. Additionally, in the SP1 time frame, there will be an Outlook 2007 patch to support displaying the archive mailbox to users in this product (currently only OL2010 and OWA support this)
3. OWA is getting some pre-fetching enhancements that will help with OWA speed issues.
4. OWA themes are making a triumphant return, for those bored with OWA being yellow.
5. EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) is getting some enhancements to convo view allowing only the new parts of a message to be downloaded to the mobile device.
6. A bunch of new ECP and EMS control for management tasks.
7. New RMS based deployments for web ready viewing of IRM documents, EAS also more RMS aware.

Lots more info on their blog, but these are the cliffnotes.. only thing missing is an expected release date!