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Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 Is Shipping

Posted by Soulskill on from the onward-and-upward dept.

jones_supa writes: Microsoft's mail and calendar server package Exchange Server 2016 is being refreshed and is now out of preview, along with the 2016 revamp for other Office products. The new Exchange tries to simplify the software's architecture while still adding new features and working better with other Office products. You can now use links from Sharepoint 2016 and OneDrive for Business as email attachments, instead of having to upload the actual file, leading to more robust file sharing and editing. Add-ins have been introduced, which allows extensibility similar to extensions on a web browser. Microsoft is providing a 180-day trial for free.

53 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. this will be the year by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Of windows on the server

  2. Refreshed? by schwit1 · · Score: 1

    I want new. Refreshed sounds too much like pre-owned.

  3. It's all clouds by craigg7500 · · Score: 2

    Most of us don't really care much about this since we use managed email in the cloud. This is only for big IT folks.

    1. Re:It's all clouds by CimmerianX · · Score: 1

      Anything on the 'cloud' is no longer secured.... I don't care how shiny and new it is. Data will forever stay on my servers.

    2. Re:It's all clouds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      How big is big? I've worked at a couple SMB IT shops over the last decade and 90% of our clients have used Exchange. That may be 70% more recently, with the smallest going to hosted Exchange (typically O365). But really the costs aren't that much to run in-house, and their are a lot of benefits including privacy/security.

      I'd say I've only run into one 50+ person company using O365, and they are very unhappy with it (I wasn't directly involved). My exposure/client base in the last 3 years is probably only 350 clients, so not a huge sample, but enough to get a "feel". Now 15 users or less, clearly O365 time. But even when the costs "make sense" the lack of up-time, features, control, integration, and support, often turns people away.

      -apk

    3. Re:It's all clouds by JeffSh · · Score: 1

      only until you can't afford it anymore.

    4. Re:It's all clouds by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

      only until you can't afford it anymore.

      ...in which case he'll probably have it sitting on tape. *shrug*

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    5. Re:It's all clouds by nine-times · · Score: 2

      I understand that mentality, but at the same time, I have to wonder: do you have a team of admins who are experts in security in general, and in securing the email software you use in specific? Because if not, your email may be more secure if you outsource it to a group who does have a team of such experts, rather than trying to do it yourself.

      Sure, it requires that you trust the team you're outsourcing to-- that's true. If you don't trust Google, don't use them as a mail host. However, I'd rather trust Google with securing my email than my company's one generalist IT guy with 3 years of experience, running a 8 year-old Exchange server shoved under someone's desk. For a lot of small companies, that's the choice they're making.

    6. Re:It's all clouds by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Office365 BABY!!! Yeah!

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    7. Re:It's all clouds by holiggan · · Score: 1

      To be honest, securing email is not that hard, unless you want to "manually" set up a structure to check messages for weird stuff.
      You can "outsource" an email hygiene service, to handle the inbound of your email, clean it, and deliver it to your own server (either Exchange or some other thing). You can do that for outbound as well, so your Exchange (or some other thing) will only send and receive SMTP on port 25 from a very specific group of know IPs (the ones from your email hygiene service provider). This alone will take away a huge chunk of the on-premisses worries with email security (no need to worry about spam attacks, bursts in email messages, workload increases, etc, etc). You just pay other guys to handle that for you.
      Of course, you can do that with spam assassin, a couple of linux boxes and such (and your email hygiene supplier will most likely be doing something similar). The difference is that they are payed and specialized in keeping an eye on email security and the latest trends, and for you, usually, this is just one of the many "hats" you wear as an IT administrator.

      --
      "A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
    8. Re:It's all clouds by nine-times · · Score: 1

      To be honest, securing email is not that hard, unless you want to "manually" set up a structure to check messages for weird stuff.

      It's not that complicated, but it's complicated enough that I've seen plenty of people mess it up. And no, it's not just "checking messages for weird stuff". If you think that's all that's involved, then you don't know enough to run a mail server.

      Do you know what SSL certificates are, or how to set one up? Do you know how to set up your firewall to allow only the appropriate ports to the Exchange server, and which ports need to be allowed? Do you understand the security implications of allowing incoming traffic to your network? Do you need to set up multiple Exchange servers with different roles, and do you know what the security implications of that would be? Do you know what MX servers are, and how to set it up so that you don't lose incoming email during a server outage? Do you know how to do a proper backup/restore of your Exchange environment, and how to secure those backups both from breach and loss? Do you know if your email system currently has any unpatched vulnerabilities? Do you have a way of mitigating those vulnerabilities? Do you have a good regimen for installing updates and patches, including testing to prevent unforeseen downtime?

      Security isn't just about protecting yourself from malicious email.

      You can "outsource" an email hygiene service, to handle the inbound of your email, clean it, and deliver it to your own server

      Whoa there. I thought we just established that you're unwilling to trust an outside vendor with your email, and now you're planning on routing all of your email through an outside vendor? If I were paranoid enough about my email to refuse to use a hosted provider, I don't think I'd be willing to use a hosted spam filtering service.

    9. Re:It's all clouds by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 1

      Data on "your" server is no longer secure. The only thing that is certain is your delusion that you have control over your data under any circumstances.

  4. Imperative? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Am I the only one who reads "Exchange Server" as an imperative? As in "Exchange this server real soon now, Cody!"?

    1. Re:Imperative? by sims+2 · · Score: 1

      No your not my first thought when I saw the headline was "I would like to exchange this server"

      --
      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
  5. Will it run on Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Really what MS is shipping is the walled garden Windows+SQL+IIS+Exchange.

    Once you walk down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

    1. Re:Will it run on Linux? by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 1

      Once you walk down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

      Is that not also true of Linux, Apple, Google etc?
      Ecosystems are a fact of life and are nothing new. I work in mixed shop so tend not to get religious about it. MS does back office stuff well (Desktop, AD, Office, Email) and Linux does front of house stuff well (Web, DB, Apps, Integration). As someone with feet in both camps, we won't be changing either of these anytime soon, simply because each are both best at what they do.

  6. Honest question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I've never used Microsoft software outside the desktop, so I am curious.

    What is the advantage of a Windows server vs, say, a Red Hat or Debian server?

    Is it just a matter of integrating better with other Microsoft software, or are there other advantages in terms of administration, reliability, etc?

    Honest question, not trolling.

    1. Re:Honest question by Anon-Admin · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ill give an honest response from my point of view. NOTE: I am a Unix/Linux admin and only use windows on the work desktop.

      Exchange does provide better integration between things like lync, office, calendar, etc. When talking to a homogeneous environment of windows desktops. I have not seen anything that suggests it is easier to administer, or that it is more stable. I also know that you require more exchange servers than Unix MTA servers for a given load. In that I mean, if you are handling 50,000 users and over 1,000,000 emails in a 24 hour period, you are looking at multiple exchange servers. Where as I have done the above in a single Unix MTA.

      So IMHO, when working with a homogeneous office environment of windows desktops. Sure go with exchange. When you have a heterogeneous environment you will have some issues. I would also not suggest that you put an exchange server on the Internet without a bunch of protection. In most cases the MTA in the DMZ is a sendmail or postfix server that is secured and relays through the DMZ to the exchange server.

    2. Re:Honest question by peragrin · · Score: 1

      To be a bit fairer to exchange. Exchange also does things like calendaring, group calendars, tasks, journals, notes, etc and that is exchange and outlooks strong point merging the standard office communications and calendaring system together.

      Comparing exchange to just an MTA is wrong. Of course you can also run a Caldev server, and some kind of group note task server on the same hardware but your requirements go up.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    3. Re:Honest question by orlanz · · Score: 1

      Single MTA doesn't mean it doesn't have redundancy. The parent is right, I work in a global shop with 60k users per regional instance. There are a lot of Exchange, domain controllers, Sharepoint, and IIS servers facing production. Not including the few backups and fail over redundancies. Lets just say a regular DSL connection wouldn't be enough for the North American _sync_ traffic.

      As for pointers, MS does do a lot of testing inside their walls and covers about 70% of the real world scenarios. Well not really, they just say their way is THE way to do it. Go outside that and you are just in unsupported land. About half of those scenarios are written down by MS and it's just some admin not doing a Google for the whitepaper. The other 30%... good luck.

  7. Re: Integrated vs. interfaced. by izm · · Score: 2

    They're sitting on billions because they know how to market to the people holding the purse strings (non-technical executives). Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft...even if its not the best tool for the job (and I will give it to them...some of their stuff is genuinely the best). That said, You'd be surprised how little "compiling" of software is required these days with linux-based solutions. Also, my biggest gripe about Microsoft is having to look for non-descript error codes online to figure out what's broken vs Iooking at an error log with some verbosity. Having access to the code also makes it easier to implement a bug fix since I can be more precise on my bug reporting, saving everybody time.

    --
    izm
  8. winmail.dat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    When is Microsoft going to release the specification for exchange-only winmail.dat email format, so the rest of the world gets a usable e-mail when companies miss-configure there exchange server to let these exchange-only e-mails outside there own LAN? Yes I know there is an old reverse-engineerd winmail.dat reader that can extract some of the attachments, and Thunderbird plugins can at least decode some of the outlook calender notices instead of showing a blank page.
    And some of the companies sending this crap to me even claim that there company is ISO-compient.

  9. We'll see what Microsoft has planned by ErichTheRed · · Score: 2

    One thing about Microsoft these days is their relentless push to stop you using their software on-premises, or at least out of their control. "Cloud first" means local datacenter last, so I'm expecting that they're going to be slowly increasing prices to a point where the MBAs have every argument they need to move the company to Office 365. Their hosted email is admittedly very good, but it's still not "yours" and not reliable in the case of network failure, Azure hiccups, etc. I'm definitely not cloud-averse, but I do know that it really doesn't cost that much to run an Exchange server in house -- the architecture has changed enough such that it's not total black magic anymore, and the majority of the day to day admin can be done by regular help desk guys or automation tools. So, most normal-sized places with simple email requirements can get away with one guy who's good with Exchange, and it doesn't have to be their full time job until you get to a certain number of users.

    Management accounting is weird -- it makes more financial sense for a company to pay and pay for years on end for a service in a subscription format, rather than buy and hold onto a software license. Same thing goes for assets -- every big company is falling all over themselves to sell real estate only to pay someone else for the privilege of occupying what was their building...all because of accounting tricks. It's so strange because it's backwards compared to personal accounting. People usually want to pay off their cars or houses and live in them without a mortgage or car loan, for example. Businesses seem to want to go to software companies and say, "Please, let me pay you forever to use your software."

    1. Re:We'll see what Microsoft has planned by nine-times · · Score: 1

      One thing about Microsoft these days is their relentless push to stop you using their software on-premises, or at least out of their control.

      I don't think Microsoft is driving that trend. People want it. Microsoft has actually been slow to respond, because I think they'd actually prefer that you keep running their servers onsite. My sense is that their push toward "the cloud" is actually an attempt to prevent other cloud providers from drinking their milkshake, and in fact they've been too slow to react.

    2. Re:We'll see what Microsoft has planned by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      For the SMB market, Office365 is a no brainer! Exchange is designed to be run on multiple servers with each one acting in dedicated role function. IN fact, so much so that SBS (Small Business Server) has been deprecated with Essentials acting only as a local domain controller / file server. Or to put it simple, Exchange is ENTERPRISE!!! That's not to say you can't run Exchange in the SMB (Small Medium Business) market, just that when you look at the cost of the hardware, licenses, and amortize it throughout its life before upgrade / replacement in the future, it's either break-even or cheaper to go with an Office365 hosted Exchange account. Just run the numbers and you'll see why.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    3. Re:We'll see what Microsoft has planned by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Management accounting is weird -- it makes more financial sense for a company to pay and pay for years on end for a service in a subscription format, rather than buy and hold onto a software license. Same thing goes for assets -- every big company is falling all over themselves to sell real estate only to pay someone else for the privilege of occupying what was their building...all because of accounting tricks. It's so strange because it's backwards compared to personal accounting.

      The differences are nothing of the sort. It all comes down to cost benefit. The reason you think it's different to personal accounting is that most people are horrendous at accounting for the lifetime cost of things around them. The way management accounting works is that you take the current asset cost look at the asset life and the final value of the asset. In there you add the pros and cons of having to hold the asset in a steady state (i.e. the same reason I just rented an apartment even though can afford to buy one, I am not sure if I need to move in a few months). Also having an asset incurs a cost. Buying a licence for something does not mean there's no more to pay. There's license tracking and renewal issues that come into play. There's the unknown of when a replacement product will be release and what the service life is.

      A lot of people happily pay the cost for someone else to manage something in return for simply using the said thing and it actually works out cheaper for them.

    4. Re:We'll see what Microsoft has planned by Tharkkun · · Score: 1

      One thing about Microsoft these days is their relentless push to stop you using their software on-premises, or at least out of their control. "Cloud first" means local datacenter last, so I'm expecting that they're going to be slowly increasing prices to a point where the MBAs have every argument they need to move the company to Office 365. Their hosted email is admittedly very good, but it's still not "yours" and not reliable in the case of network failure, Azure hiccups, etc. I'm definitely not cloud-averse, but I do know that it really doesn't cost that much to run an Exchange server in house -- the architecture has changed enough such that it's not total black magic anymore, and the majority of the day to day admin can be done by regular help desk guys or automation tools. So, most normal-sized places with simple email requirements can get away with one guy who's good with Exchange, and it doesn't have to be their full time job until you get to a certain number of users.

      Management accounting is weird -- it makes more financial sense for a company to pay and pay for years on end for a service in a subscription format, rather than buy and hold onto a software license. Same thing goes for assets -- every big company is falling all over themselves to sell real estate only to pay someone else for the privilege of occupying what was their building...all because of accounting tricks. It's so strange because it's backwards compared to personal accounting. People usually want to pay off their cars or houses and live in them without a mortgage or car loan, for example. Businesses seem to want to go to software companies and say, "Please, let me pay you forever to use your software."

      Unless you need to customize your software on the database level it's going to be cheaper to host your products in a cloud environment, long term. These cloud companies can offer it cheaper based on existing infrastructure than what most small or even large companies would need to purchase in house.

    5. Re:We'll see what Microsoft has planned by drsmithy · · Score: 1

      It's so strange because it's backwards compared to personal accounting. People usually want to pay off their cars or houses and live in them without a mortgage or car loan, for example. Businesses seem to want to go to software companies and say, "Please, let me pay you forever to use your software."

      (In the general case...)

      As an individual, you have to consider the last 10-20 years of your life where you will need to survive without an income.

      As a business, you do not.

      Specific to hosted vs local systems, generally speaking keeping people on staff to manage systems is expensive, with nearly no benefit vs paying for a functionally equivalent hosted system. This is simply a product of technological advancement that has made hardware incredibly cheap, internet connections cheap, fast and reliable, and people expensive.

    6. Re:We'll see what Microsoft has planned by jez9999 · · Score: 1

      Their hosted email is admittedly very good, but it's still not "yours" and not reliable in the case of network failure, Azure hiccups, etc.

      And I still don't know what their recommended solution is for accessing O365 on that day every leap year.

      --
      == Jez ==
      Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
  10. Re:This software is still around? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Features? Email and Calendar. Seriously, that's what 90% of the people on exchange use. I'm still amazed that no one has come up with something that does this as good as Exchange (in a private network setting).

  11. I used to care by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    I used to care, but over the years software has become so shitty and buggy I don't give a rat's ass anymore.

  12. Who is going to use it? by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

    With the vast migration away from Exchange toward O365, what Enterprises that run on a "traditional" AD/Exchange environment will use this?
    Am I missing something?

    --
    We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    1. Re:Who is going to use it? by HerculesMO · · Score: 1

      Regulated ones. Archaic ones. Ones with a lot of legal issues. There are plenty of use cases, though most of them will be solved through contractual obligations at some point and everybody will migrate to the cloud.

      There really isn't a market for IT Pros as much any more... everybody is turning more and more into a developer, and that's what will be needed to manage this type of stuff; DevOps and Developers. IT Admins are now a commodity.

      --
      The price is always right if someone else is paying.
    2. Re:Who is going to use it? by nine-times · · Score: 1

      Well there are still some non-O365 hosted Exchange companies, e.g. Backspace and Intermedia, who will use this. There are also quite a few companies who are not following the trend toward cloud-hosted email. Besides, I'd bet that a lot of the improvements are being developed for O365 anyway, so I'd bet they continue developing a non-hosted version of Exchange for as long as the cost of porting those O365 updates to the stand-alone version of Exchange is outweighed by the profits of selling licenses to those companies that will buy a stand-alone version.

    3. Re:Who is going to use it? by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

      There really isn't a market for IT Pros as much any more... everybody is turning more and more into a developer, and that's what will be needed to manage this type of stuff; DevOps and Developers. IT Admins are now a commodity.

      I think it depends on the type of business. I'm a SysAdmin and I've been involved in a very specific, "niche" industry for over ten years, which in hindsight was a GodSend... I would completely agree regarding IT in traditional Enterprise Operations where it's an AD/Exchange environment with all the usual departments doing the traditional tasks. I would assume that is about 80% of the market.

      In reality, managing O365 is much more of a PITA and time consuming, from a "hand holding" perspective than local Exchange ever was. And don't get me started on the migration...

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    4. Re:Who is going to use it? by DogDude · · Score: 1

      Our company rents our Exchange from a big ISP that runs Exchange Server. A lot cheaper than Office 365 from Microsoft.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    5. Re:Who is going to use it? by ledow · · Score: 1

      Wait until the first 365 compromise, where you find out that all your documents, email and everything else that you use to communicate with customers and internally just became public.

      Then see the sudden rush of realisation that just because Microsoft were hosting it for you, doesn't excuse you of your data protection obligations (at least for the entire EU), and you can't put the blame on them either.

    6. Re:Who is going to use it? by mu51c10rd · · Score: 1

      We still use Exchange on premise. It is far cheaper to purchase the Windows and Exchange license with the appropriate CALs when we already have the virtual infrastructure in place to handle it. Why pay for a permanent subscription when we can host for a fraction of the cost.

  13. Re: Integrated vs. interfaced. by izm · · Score: 1

    I thought I made it clear that googling for obscure error codes was a windows thing....

    --
    izm
  14. Re:This software is still around? by acoustix · · Score: 1

    Features: LDAP connectivity (global contacts, groups), email, calendaring, meeting resources, tasks lists, public/shared folders, office suite integration, etc. Almost every company on Exchange uses all of these features.

    It's ok to be a Microsoft hater. But get the facts right.

    --
    "A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
  15. Exchange, Zimbra, GroupWise, Postifx Admin Here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Exchange is FAR more feature rich (it's not an MTA it's a groupware suite) and is easier to administer in most ways than Postifx or the Postfix based suites, including Zimbra. This is generally true even for non-Windows clients. However, when looking at Windows clients there is nothing even vaguely close to compare to Exchange in terms of features, administrative capability and ease...

    Here's just one simple example that has been present in Exchange since the beginning. What does it take to move a user's multi-gigabyte mailbox to another server internationally with Postfix, Dovecot or Zimbra or some such? Can you do it live without interruption to the user? Do you have to reconfigure that client(MUA) afterwards? Does it suck? With Exchange such a move is completely seamless and requires only three or four clicks to kick it off and forget about it.

    Anyone, ANYONE that argues to the contrary of Exchange's ease of use, has not administered Exchange. This from someone that loves Postfix and sometimes puts Postfix in front of Exchange for free spam/virus filtering or special routing needs.

    Powershell does suck HUGE HAIRY BALLS! Jesus what a verbose mess! But, I digress...

    Exchange does require more hardware than a Unix MTA solution, but I suppose that everything in life is a trade off. On the user facing side, Exchange wins by a country mile.

    1. Re:Exchange, Zimbra, GroupWise, Postifx Admin Here by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      Anyone, ANYONE that argues to the contrary of Exchange's ease of use, has not administered Exchange. This from someone that loves Postfix and sometimes puts Postfix in front of Exchange for free spam/virus filtering or special routing needs.

      Exchange is something I never understood. The first version I screwed with was about 20 years ago before an official SMTP connector even existed. Since that time I've tried some of the new releases and it is always the same crap. Runs for a while and then something gets stuck in a queue some process gets a memory leak or crashes constantly, a datastore (f'ing Jet) gets corrupted, syncs mysteriously failing. It was an endless parade of failure and this was only a few people screwing around. There was always SOMETHING wrong with exchange and always someone complaining about it ... I can understand the feature set and appeal for business users yet something just doesn't add up.

      To anyone who manages exchange in a serious environment is exchange reliable for you or are you constantly having to deal with bullshit? To contrast also used Zimbra and never had even a single problem with shit breaking.

    2. Re:Exchange, Zimbra, GroupWise, Postifx Admin Here by cyberchondriac · · Score: 1

      That sounds like Novell GroupWise. We using that, but the admin office over us is pushing us to go Exchange soon. Frankly, I think I'll fine with that. GroupWise chokes all the time.

      --

      Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
    3. Re:Exchange, Zimbra, GroupWise, Postifx Admin Here by orlanz · · Score: 1

      With Exchange such a move is completely seamless and requires only

      I am sorry. I agree with your post in general. But this is a peeve of mine. I want to slap anyone who throws up this regurgitated MS dribble about any MS product and punch any MS Consultant that states the same. We have done exactly what you said for MEGABYTE mailboxes for 20k+ instances. The project plan didn't even have a manager & service desk communication, let alone end user communications. It was all supposed to be seamless back end stuff driven by MS tools and MS environment, off hours. Our users noticed (not one offs), the SD freaked out, and we spent a good 2-3 days wasting time on "nothing broke" meetings with management.

      I had to halt the project to the dismay of the head PM and MS consultants who kept telling me "No, that can't be right. Its seamless." In the end, the project was fine, communications went out, expectations set, we lost like 2% of the mailboxes and they were recoverable. We may have lost a handful of random emails, but we never know, who cares. As you said, this is all very impressive, but seamless isn't a word I would ever use again with MS products.

      The situation was made worse by the fact that pilots were done, we were the 3rd batch, and 2nd largest. Just no one believed the instances that broke the "seamless" concept as real in the prior batches and no lessons learned were noted. I am sure nothing is still noted.

  16. Re: Integrated vs. interfaced. by nine-times · · Score: 1

    it means that people that only think they know what they're doing can really mess things up when they're incorrect.

    To be fair, it also means that people who pretty much know what they're doing (but might not be experts) figure out how to do things by browsing through the GUI. I think that's a point that often gets missed by the pro-CLI crowd. CLIs can be much easier and more powerful if you really know all the commands and syntax and intricacies of the shell language, but if not, it's easier to browse through a GUI, see all of your options, and check a few boxes.

  17. Re:Integrated vs. interfaced. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    The reason I LIKE Microsoft's approach to software is that they like to make large do everything software. vs smaller do one thing and do it well software.

    I have spent way too much of my life with interoperability problems to be swayed by the do one thing and do it well approach.

  18. Just deployed 2013! by antdude · · Score: 1

    Hahaha. My employer just deployed 2013. At least older versions are more stable! :P

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  19. Re: This software is still around? by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

    Not to mention integration with videoconferencing systems.

  20. Re:Integrated vs. interfaced. by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

    Sometimes that's a good thing though. It took decades for the *ix community to realize that, actually, yes, email, rules applying to email, address books (both local and LDAP), and calendars go together, and many are still trying to figure out SSO, largely because the latter isn't as relevant to home networks as, say, email.

    The problem isn't integration, it's bad integration. Netscape really screwed everyone over by making Communicator some all-in-one master-of-nothing PoC in the 1990s, creating unnecessary bloatware that influenced a generation of geeks to fear attempts to integrate.

    Exchange Server is something I reluctantly admit Microsoft got completely 100% right.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  21. Re: This software is still around? by cbhacking · · Score: 1

    Also general availability information. Not just scheduled stuff like meetings, but knowing when somebody is available or not. Lync (now Skype for Business) ties deeply into Exchange.

    --
    There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
  22. Re: Integrated vs. interfaced. by TWX · · Score: 1

    How the hell would someone unfamiliar with a CLI even know which fucking man page to start looking at?

    I don't know about you, but I started with Packard Bell's Teach Yourself DOS on my 8088 back in 1986 or so and moved on to UNIX In A Nutshell dating to about 1990 sometime thereafter.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  23. Re: Integrated vs. interfaced. by TWX · · Score: 1

    it means that people that only think they know what they're doing can really mess things up when they're incorrect.

    To be fair, it also means that people who pretty much know what they're doing (but might not be experts) figure out how to do things by browsing through the GUI. I think that's a point that often gets missed by the pro-CLI crowd. CLIs can be much easier and more powerful if you really know all the commands and syntax and intricacies of the shell language, but if not, it's easier to browse through a GUI, see all of your options, and check a few boxes.

    You know what I call those who click-through GUI interfaces only sort-of knowing what they're doing?

    Customers.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  24. Re:Integrated vs. interfaced. by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 1

    The issue I have with Microsoft's approach to software is that they like to make large do everything software. vs smaller do one thing and do it well software.

    That doesn't even pass the first scratch and sniff test.
    Exchange does Email. SQL does DB. Windows is the OS. Sharepoint is a CMS. None of these things try to do anything more than what they are, and most of them are market leaders in their field (or at least up there).
    I know it's cool to hate on MS, but at least try to make sense when you do...