EV8 SP1 is the way to go.
A new client is not *required*, but you would lose all the new functionality like vault cache.
You do not need to upload new forms to exchange, as the new (as well as the old) client have the ability to deploy the forms locally on the client.
Cheers
Michel
Offline Vault will still work with a ev2007 client pointing to a EV8 server. It just won't use the new functionality of Vault Cache ie. it will download the messages the old way.
If you upgrade to EV8 server then when the client is upgraded to EV 8 the OV is replaced by the VC (Vault Cache) this will be a complete rebuild and all content will have to be downloaded again from EV.
The EV 2k7 client can be used with 8.0 no problem. I am contuining to use the EV2k7sp5 client with our EV 8.0 environment.
You do not necessarily have to push the forms to the server. Even in the 2k7 client EV will use the local forms library (this is an advanced outlook\desktop setting). Using the local forms library does use a bit more bandwidth but I find it preferrable as it is much more reliable.
In my experience this conversion has not worked so far. Each time the upgrade would kick off a new build of the VC. I've tried this multiple times in different labs without success.
