So, for years there has been talk about the death of public folders, but are they really dead? The short answer is no. Exchange 2007 does still have public folders so they won't be going away soon, but does that mean they are safe from the guillotine? No, I believe that the writing on the wall points to the eventual demise of public folders.

First, although public folders are present in Exchange 2007, if you have all Exchange 2007 servers and Outlook 2007 clients you do not need public folders any more. That is right; you can run exchange without public folders.

Second, there is no GUI administration of public folders in exchange 2007. You have to use powershell. Also there is no public folder support via OWA on Exchange 2007.

Third, a little product called SharePoint. If you have not heard of it or are not running it, go, now, and put it on a server

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/sharepoint/download.mspx

If you own a copy of windows 2003, then Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is free. You do have to purchase SharePoint Portal Server which does give you some more functionality, but that product is based on WSS. SharePoint is better than public folders ever thought about being. It is probably the one software product from Microsoft that has really exploded the most in recent years. Just looking at the vendors at Microsoft's TechNet conference illustrates this point. Within the past couple of years, there has been an swell of vendors selling SharePoint related products. It is big and growing and has Exchange Public Folders in its' sites.

Finally, there is this from the Microsoft Exchange Team blog:

"We are "de-emphasizing" Public Folders–which means that Public Folders may not be in our next major release after E12. That being said let me re-affirm our commitment to fully support E12 Public Folders through at least 2016."

Need I say more? Perhaps migrating from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 is the perfect time for you to start "de-emphasizing" public folders in your organization.