Microsoft Exchange

Microsoft vs. Cisco over PostPath acquisition

Microsoft Subnet — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:48:33 -0400

We warned you that PostPath was a company to watch for its Linux-based attack on Exchange. Earlier this month we profiled PostPath customer Globe Manufacturing. With Cisco's announced acquisition of PostPath it has become obvious that Cisco intends to attack the UC market with a play straight from a Redmond playbook. First you launch a product that competes with your rival's bread-and-butter and then you compete on price. PostPath bills itself as a drop-in alternative to Exchange. It allows users to continue using the Outlook client, but the back office server runs PostPath software on CentOS Linux.

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Cisco buys e-mail supplier for the cloud; goes head-to-head against Microsoft

Cisco Subnet — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:42:38 -0400

It looks like Cisco is going head-to-head against e-mail software giant Microsoft with its $215 million acquisition of PostPath, a maker of e-mail and calendaring software. PostPath apparently touts its PostPath Server e-mail and collaboration server as a replacement or supplement to Microsoft Exchange. What's more interesting is that Cisco plans to put the server in the cloud and selling an e-mail and calendaring service to its customers - this is perhaps Cisco's first formal offering in the oh-so fashionable cloud computing space that pundits have been busy discussing.

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How one customer said no to Exchange but yes to Outlook and Windows Mobile (part 1)

Microsoft Subnet — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:39:38 -0400

From Microsoft Subnet editor Julie Bort: On Friday, I had a conversation with an IT professional whose communication strategy is backwards from how most of the rest of the world seems to be doing it. This company has snubbed Microsoft Exchange even though it has standardized on Outlook as its e-mail/contact manager client. At the same time, it has embraced (and is loving) Windows Mobile as its mobile workforce standard (rather than popular favorite BlackBerry).

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iPhone's "Just Good Enough" Business Strategy

Mitchell Ashley — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:52:17 -0400

Opinions about the iPhone 3G and 2.0 software update are still rolling in more than a week after its announcement. Not to miss an opportunity to sell more reports, Gartner's even weighing in on how the iPhone will fare with business. While all of us debate the merits of the iPhone 2.0 software's Microsoft Exchange sync, downloadable third-party apps through the Apple Store (only, btw), and whether the iPhone is secure enough for the enterprise, meeting enterprise requirements doesn't really matter. Apple's got their sights on a whole different target. Consumers.

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iPhone 3G Plays Catch Up

Mitchell Ashley — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:59:00 -0400

It was the big Apple iPhone 3G/2.0 announcement on Monday, with everyone hanging by their bare fingernails waiting for Steve Jobs to proclaim the next iPhone goodies from Apple. Rumors ranged from colored iPhone models to video chat. The biggest news was a price reduction, offering the current iPhone model at $199, and the sale of iPhones in 70-some international markets. Here's my take on Apple's iPhone 3G phone and iPhone 2.0 software announcements.

Category: Playing Catch Up, or Welcome to 2007, iPhone

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Blackberry's a Ferrari, iPhone's a DeLorean

Mitchell Ashley — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:36:41 -0400

Everyone's interest is up about the new Apple 3G iPhone coming next week. I'm sure Steve Jobs will do his pitchman shtick as well as he ever has. I expect to see Steve roll out some cool iPhone app a 3rd party developed with the iPhone SDK along with touting new features and styling of the 3G iPhone. But no amount of shtick can cover over the fact that the iPhone popularity still pales in comparison to the Blackberry for business users.

A ChangeWave Research report shows the percentage of companies planning to buy Blackberry devices rising from from 61% to 82% over the last five months.

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"Sterling" Beta Brings Forefront Front and Center

Mitchell Ashley — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:20:40 -0400

I had an opportunity to spend some quality time at the Microsoft RSA booth today and take a good look at the Forefront "Sterling" beta, released at the RSA show. One of my first goals was understanding just how the Forefront brand fit into Microsoft's product mix and clear up some confusion I've had. Personally, I've long found the Forefront branding by Microsoft to be confusing between Microsoft Forefront, Windows Live OneCare and Microsoft NAP. It think I've got it now, but no promises.

Forefront today consists of three primary product areas; Forefront Client Security (the enterprise AV/AS product), Forefront for SharePoint and Exchange, and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA).

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Microsoft Mesh Could End Windows OS As We Know It

Mitchell Ashley — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:28:38 -0400

Microsoft announced today they are again extending the product life of Windows XP Home, supporting it on ultra-low cost PCs to combat the Linux surge into that market. This revolving door of Windows end of life entensions is turning into one of those death row sagas, where the condemned continually waits for that fateful stay of execution call from the Governor. Most everyone will attribute Windows XP's extended lease on life due to the variety of complaints and seeming low value proposition of Vista to IT organizations being asked to bear the costs, enduring yet another Windows operating system upgrade.

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The 20 most useful Microsoft sites for IT professionals

Microsoft Subnet — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:13:06 -0400

Microsoft professionals have a lot to keep track of, and a lot of market noise to contend with. That's why we've compiled this list of the 20 best places on the Web to help you find what you need. The list includes technology-specific sites, worthy bloggers and safe resources to help you pass your next Microsoft cert or training course. Plus we'll reveal places for trustworthy free Microsoft software and the best sites to help you stay on top of the voluminous amount of news churned out by, and about, the folks in Redmond.

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Exchange and WS2008 unhappy together

Microsoft Subnet — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:00:38 -0500

Now there's a good move (NOT!) -- Exchange cannot be easily ported to Windows Server 2008. In fact "not easy" is an understatement. Sounds as if such a migration is near-on impossible. The story says: "The vendor is already warning users that the RTM version of Exchange 2007 cannot be installed on Windows Server 2008 and that it is impossible to do an in-place upgrade to Windows Server 2008 on a server running Exchange 2007 SP1."

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The space shuttle Exchange

ronaldxbartels — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 09:53:23 -0500

I have been following the space shuttle Atlantis on [url=http://www.floridatoday.com/floridatoday/blogs/spaceteam/flametrench.xml]The Flame Trench via RSS[/url]. Now Exchange is much the same as the space shuttle. It is a dated technology that has survived because there isn't anything else to replace it. The backend engine in Exchange, Jet, is as old as the reusable booster rockets. Sometime back I created a [url=http://thinkingproblemmanagement.blogspot.com/2007/08/exchange-pilots-checklist.html]checklist for Exchange[/url]. The thing with Exchange is that the same damn things catches you out and when you encounter them a second or even third time you mind tends to discount any previous lessons learned, as you think, they couldn't have done the same hare-brained thing again?

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Microsoft Exchange via SaaS

Microsoft Subnet — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 10:27:52 -0500

Sometimes Microsoft shoots itself in the foot -- and thank goodness it does. Microsoft won't support Exchange running on VMware (for obvious reasons) which leaves a nice market gap for creative companies such as Azaleos. Azaleos offers Exchange on VMware via a SaaS model. And now Azaleos has got this great customer case study to act as a reference for the service. This story by John Fontana in Network World says:

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Apple Goes Crazy, Puts Out Job Ad For Microsoft Exchange Engineer

Mitchell Ashley — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 02:04:16 -0500

The AppleInsider reports that Apple is hiring an iPhone Windows Outlook/Exchange QA Engineer. Here's the job description, per a blog post by Jennifer Lawinski at ChannelWeb.

"The iPhone Quality team is looking for a motivated, highly-technical Exchange test/sync engineer with excellent problem solving and communication skills. You will join a dynamic team responsible for qualifying the latest iPhone products. Your focus will be testing Exchange and Outlook functionality with Apple's innovative new phone. The successful candidate will complete both documented and adhoc testing to ensure high quality releases."

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Google makes getting your Exchange email easier

Mitchell Ashley — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:40:07 -0500

Google now has available APIs to help migrate email from your Exchange server to Google apps for small business, enterprise, schools and personal use. Google Gmail, Calendar, Google Talk and Google Docs are of course the cause of Microsoft's response with Office Live On Demand applications.

Google is also trying to ease the transition to Gmail by supporting email delivery to both Gmail and Exchange accounts, run only a subset of accounts on Gmail, and offering Postini spam filtering and policy management for email.

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Exchange: An untapped social network gold mine

Mitchell Ashley — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 09:30:22 -0500

Social networking is hugely interesting not only from a technology perspective but because of the new and unique ways it interconnects people and allows us to communicate. Brad Feld, an early investor in Web 2.0 and social networking companies, follows this space very closely. Brad was also the lead investor through the Mobius VC firm at my last company, StillSecure. And he is continuing on his investment path in social networking and web 2.0 companies with his new firm The Foundry Group.

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iPhone to Exchange email gateways - Not what IT wants

Mitchell Ashley — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:19:32 -0500

Synchronica today announced their iPhone to Microsoft Exchange Server gateway capability to UK users. This announcement comes after their six month trial of the same service in the US. Over 10,000 Subscribers are reported to have signed up for the US service.

Exchange integration for the iPhone has been one of the major weaknesses in the iPhone product. Many business users have been forced to avoid the iPhone in place of other Phone / PDAs because of it. Apple's rapidly working on Exchange support and some of my contacts have seen it in use.

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Smartphone follies

John.Obeto — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:56:59 -0400

I have a couple of Windows Mobile smartphones that use Microsoft Outlook™ to synchronize with my corporate and personal Microsoft Exchange Servers on the backend, a situation comparable to that of most smartphone users.

Like it or not, Outlook is the Gold Standard in this category, and has been for quite a while, receiving continual dev funds from Microsoft due to its (Outlook’s) necessity in the enterprise.

Reading through my feed list yesterday, I came across an article that purports to help wean users from Outlook. Ready to give it the normal cursory glance I give such flights of fancy, my eyes glommed upon one of those buzzwords used by lazy writers when bereft of new ideas. In this case, bloatware.

You know I had to give it a good read then!

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Using SAN-enabled certificates for OCS and Unified Messaging

Alex Lewis — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 01:53:11 -0400

I ran into an interesting situation with a client today regarding their LCS 2005 implementation. It was a great opportunity to discuss the use of SAN-enabled certificates. There seems to be a limited understanding of certificates that allow Subject Alternative Names. SANs in your certificates allow for Enhanced Federation for your primary domain and Direct Federation for your secondary domains. Only this year have major providers started offering SAN-enabled certificates. Verisign offers them only through their Enterprise SSL Managed PKI solution, Entrust offers a Unified Communications Certificate and GeoTrust offers a limited SAN-enabled cert called the Power Server ID.

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Interested in Microsoft Unified Communications?

Rand Morimoto — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:24:34 -0400

A lot of people are following this blog for more information on Unified Communications. Rightfully so as it's the future of corporate communications infrastructure. The combination of email, IM and universal presence make communicating to coworkers, colleagues and friends easier than ever. Microsoft learning has a lot of online courses than can give you a good technology foundation to start working with it yourself. Right now, they have the Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging course listed for free. I'm not sure how long it will last, so if you're interested, sign up now!

Click here to go to the MS Learning site for the free course.

-Alex

Exchange team details what's in Exchange 2007 SP1 beta

Microsoft Subnet — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:37:12 -0500

The Microsoft Exchange Team is giving details about SP1 of Exchange 2007 beta, to be released in April via TechNet. The team says it is targeting final reelsae with Longhorn Server in the second half of this year. check out the features of Exchange 2007 SP1 here , which include Clustered Continuous Replication for replication of data between two servers, new mobility policies and an updated Exchange Management Console.

Do these additions to Exchange work for you? If not, why not?