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 Are you upgrading to Exchange Server Standard or Enterprise Edition? Which edition depends on your companies’ size and usage. Exchange 2000/2003 Server Standard Edition has quite a few limitations in comparison with the Enterprise Edition. Among them is the 16GB database size limit, lack of Clustering support, lack of ability to act as a Front-End server (this limit was in fact removed in Exchange Server 2003 Standard Edition)
To upgrade the Standard Edition of Microsoft Exchange Server to the Enterprise Edition of Microsoft Exchange Server, run the Setup program from the Exchange Server Enterprise Edition compact disc and click the Reinstall button.
If in fact you are upgrading from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003 there are many factors to consider. After you have chosen the Exchange 2003 Edition you want then there are active directory issues, backup, recovery, hardware, licensing issues, and more to consider.
Contact Intercore for a free evaluation of your choices and migration path
Answer: No. Companies can build a new Windows NT 4.0 backup domain controller (BDC), replicate the BDC and promote it as the company's primary domain controller (PDC), and then perform an in-place upgrade on the new PDC. This makes the upgrade from a Windows NT 4.0 system to Active Directory viable.
In addition, if you want to guarantee that the primary global catalog server exists only on a new server running Windows Server 2003 and not an upgraded server running Windows NT 4.0, you need to build a new global catalog server running Windows Server 2003. It is also necessary to move the operations master roles (also known as flexible single master operations or FSMO roles) from the upgraded server running Windows NT 4.0 to the clean server running Windows Server 2003.
Answer: No. You can clean up Windows NT 4.0 directory objects by deleting old groups, user accounts, and computer accounts before performing an upgrade. Alternatively, you can perform an in-place upgrade on the Windows NT 4.0 directory by upgrading old and obsolete objects, and then deleting obsolete objects from Active Directory over the course of a few days. Note that it is faster to retain all of the existing objects and then disable and delete obsolete objects than it is to spend 6 to 9 months identifying all individual objects and then moving them over one-by-one.
Answer: Yes. When performing an in-place upgrade from Windows NT 4.0, the user is asked early in the process to provide a DNS name for the new Active Directory forest. Therefore, if the Windows NT 4.0 NetBIOS domain name is Contoso, Ltd., the fully qualified forest name for Active Directory can be contoso.com or some other name. For more information about DNS design considerations, see "Upgrading Domains from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows Server 2003 Active Directory" (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=34161) in the Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit.
Answer: Yes. Special techniques and procedures have been created and documented step-by-step in the articles "In-Place Upgrade of Microsoft Windows and Active Directory" and "Upgrading Exchange Server 5.5 to Exchange Server 2003 Using the Standard Deployment Method." These procedures make it possible to perform an in-place upgrade to Active Directory, and then successfully roll back to Windows NT 4.0 if the upgrade fails. An in-place upgrade typically takes 2 to 3 hours to complete. The decision to perform a rollback will likely be made within a day of the upgrade and can be performed in 4 to 6 hours (or less).
Answer: Yes. The in-place upgrade method can be used to perform an in-place upgrade and consolidate multiple Windows NT 4.0 domains as child domains to an Active Directory forest. For example, a company can upgrade Windows NT 4.0 domains in various locations (for example, North , Asia, and Europe) into the forest contoso.com. Each upgrade maintains user and computer accounts. This upgrade method eliminates the need for administrators to physically touch every computer, desktop, or user profile configuration. Multiple stand-alone Windows NT 4.0 domains are simultaneously consolidated into a single forest.
Answer: No. With Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1), it is now possible to move user mailboxes across site boundaries. The ability to move user mailboxes across site boundaries allows for the consolidation of remote site servers into fewer regional or centralized servers.
Answer: No. All users who launch Microsoft Outlook® following a mailbox move from one server to another will have their profiles automatically updated and pointing to the new server running Exchange Server 2003. No desktops or user profiles need to be touched during the move.
Answer: No. When mailboxes are moved, the data is cleaned and defragmented before it is stored on the new server. The standard deployment method allows the extraction of mail messages from even a corrupted mail store to be cleaned during the move mailbox process.
Answer: No. Moving mailboxes does not cause significant downtime for end users. Downtime occurs only when a mailbox is moved from the source Exchange server to the target Exchange server. For example, if a user has a small mailbox, 250 megabytes (MB) in size, the downtime will likely be only a few minutes. Even large 2-gigabyte (GB) or 3-GB mailboxes take approximately 30 to 45 minutes to move. After mailboxes are moved, users can immediately access their mail. This method is preferred to other mailbox migration methods because it decreases downtime for end users.
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EDI Integration 
