Microsoft Exchange, an enterprise computing system used by millions globally to track their schedules and important activities, has a faulty workaround from Microsoft Corp. and may not function properly when Daylight Savings Time kicks in three weeks earlier than usual in the U.S. and much of Canada this Sunday, March 11, says Info-Tech Research Group.

”Microsoft Exchange administrators are awash in uncertainty, alarm and confusion at the moment,” said Darin Stahl, research team lead at Info-Tech Research Group. “Microsoft Exchange servers supporting Outlook 2003 and earlier versions — which include the majority of Outlook calendar users — are affected by this faulty solution from Microsoft, and IT managers need to intervene now to avoid appointment havoc.”

Microsoft’s help lines have been crammed for days with anxious enterprise IT managers struggling to ensure all systems are go for seamless introduction of DST. The problem with Exchange results from the complexity of the rules that underlie the timing in the Outlook calendar, the volume of instructions relating to Outlook, and shifting information from Microsoft.

”Businesses have known that this was coming since the U.S. government announced the change last fall,” said Stahl. “However, unlike the Year 2000 issue when everyone had years to prepare, this change was relatively rapid. Microsoft just introduced their tool for Exchange a month ago, and unfortunately, it doesn’t work properly.”

Info-Tech discovered the glitch when addressing its own IT department needs for DST patches and after spending hours on hold in the Microsoft Help Desk queue. The research firm, which provides tactical and practical advice for enterprises, decided to publish revised instructions for IT managers telling them how to fix the Exchange problem and how to manually resolve problems if need be. (The information is available free of charge at: http://www.infotech.com/ITA/Issues/20070306/Articles/Exchange2003DSTChaosSurvivalGuide.aspx)

”Hopefully there will be some less stressed IT managers thanks to the information on our Web site,” said Stahl.

For consumers, there should be automatic software downloads coming from Microsoft, but anyone not already subscribing to those updates should be going to the Microsoft Web site to request them, Info-Tech advises. And as to whether the tools implemented by Microsoft for consumers and enterprises will work well, no one will really know until the clock strikes twelve, Stahl says.

”Only time will tell, pardon the pun,” he said.