TCA Podcast Episode 39: "Do I really need to monitor Office 365?"

A move to the cloud is almost always accompanied by change. Sometimes these changes are pretty obvious and easy to grasp while other times they are more of paradigm shift - one such shift is in the way we monitor out deployments. Monitoring your tenant and supporting services won’t prevent a service problem, but it will help you to respond proactively when one occurs and let your users know about the problem before they start alerting you. In this episode we’ll talk to Justin Harris, CTO of ENow Software about how monitoring cloud services is radically different from monitoring traditional on-premises infrastructure and why it is important to get it right. We’ll also delve into the built-in tools you can use in your own Office 365 tenant and why you may way to consider augmenting those with some third-party monitoring tools.

For more information on The Cloud Architects podcast, check us out on SoundCloud

TCA Podcast Episode 38: Outlook for Mac - No longer a second-class citizen..

Outlook for Mac has come a long way since it’s humble beginnings as Microsoft Entourage. As avid Outlook for Mac users ourselves, Nic and I were excited to sit down with Alessio and Jessica to talk about the history, the much anticipated new version of the product and how important your feedback is to the team building it!

For more information on The Cloud Architects podcast, check us out on SoundCloud

TCA Podcast Episode 37: "Rumors of the death of email have been greatly exaggerated"

Message transport in Office 365 “Just works” and is often considered to be the plumbing of the service. Despite the rise in popularity of social messaging apps, 62% of business professionals prefer email for business communications and the number of emails delivered daily worldwide is forecast to grow 18% by 2023. In this episode we chat to Kevin Shaughnessy about some of the message transport enhancements and innovation announced at Microsoft Ignite recently.

For more information on The Cloud Architects podcast, check us out on SoundCloud

TCA Podcast Episode 36: All about Microsoft FastTrack

Ever heard of Microsoft FastTrack? FastTrack helps customers deploy Microsoft cloud solutions - customers with eligible subscriptions can use FastTrack at no additional cost for the life of their subscription. We sat down with Jennifer Burdett from the FastTrack Team to talk about what FastTrack is, how you can make the most of this benefit and how partners can compliment this offering.

For more information on The Cloud Architects podcast, check us out on SoundCloud

TCA Podcast Episode 35: Calendar - Outlook's unsung hero!

If you’re like me, your Outlook Calendar is the first thing you look at every morning and the last thing you look at before heading off to bed - days seem to get more and more busy and we need some way to organize and schedule our daily lives. For many of us though, the calendar functionality built into Outlook is something we all take for granted. In this episode, we’ll talk to Julia Foran who is a Program Manager on Outlook Calendar and works on the server-side features that are consumed by the Outlook clients. We talk about Ignite announcements and some of the improvements coming to Outlook Calendar.

For more information on The Cloud Architects podcast, check us out on SoundCloud

TCA Podcast Episode 34: Azure for AWS Professionals

With the explosive growth of cloud services, many organizations suddenly find themselves having to manage multiple cloud environments, either intentionally or by coincidence due to mergers, acquisitions or other such events. With Azure and AWS being two of the most popular choices, we talk to Azure MVP Mike Pfeiffer who is also AWS certified about the parallels between the two services, things to consider when running two clouds and discuss if multi-cloud makes more sense as a transitional state or long-term mode of operation.

For more information on The Cloud Architects podcast, check us out on SoundCloud

TCA Podcast Episode 33: Data warehousing, data lakes and big data with SQLChick

Data warehousing is a massive topic! We’ve all heard of data lakes, data swamps and big data in general, but what does it all mean? We sat down with Melissa Coates (a.k.a SQLChick) in an attempt to gain an understanding of this complex topic and definitely learned a thing or two in the process.

For more information on The Cloud Architects podcast, check us out on SoundCloud

TCA Podcast Episode 32: Adoption vs Consumption (and feeding your kids broccoli)

Adoption is top of mind for many organizations at the moment - be it adoption of a particular workload (like Microsoft Teams) or cloud services in general. Warren and Nic sat down with the always entertaining Tracy van der Schyff to talk about the difference between adoption and consumption and the concept of user empowerment.

For more information on The Cloud Architects podcast, check us out on SoundCloud

Are you ready for the Exchange 2010 end of life?

This post was originally published TechTarget, you can view the original post here

Exchange Server 2010 end of life is approaching – do you have your migration plan plotted out yet?

Exchange Server 2010 reached general availability on November 9, 2009, and has been the cornerstone of the collaboration strategy for many organizations over the last decade. Since that time, Microsoft also produced three releases of Exchange Server, with Exchange Server 2019 being the most recent. Exchange Server 2010 continues to serve the needs of many organizations, but they must look to migrate from this platform when support ends on January 14, 2020.

Editor’s note: [A Sept. 16 blog] (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Exchange-Team-Blog/Microsoft-Extending-End-of-Support-for-Exchange-Server-2010-to/ba-p/753591) on the Exchange Team site indicated Microsoft would push the extended support of Exchange Server 2010 from Jan. 14, 2020 to Oct. 13, 2020 “to give Exchange Server 2010 customers more time to complete their migrations. This extension also aligns with the end of support for Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010.” Administrators who run Exchange Server 2010 workloads on Windows Server 2008 will need to make adjustments due to the Jan. 14, 2020, end-of-life for that server operating system.

What exactly does end of support mean for existing Exchange Server 2010 deployments? Your Exchange 2010 servers will continue to operate with full functionality after this date; however, Microsoft will no longer provide technical support for the product. In addition, bug fixes, security patches and time zone updates will no longer be provided after the end-of-support date. If you haven’t already started your migration from Exchange Server 2010, now is the time to start by seeing what your options are.

Exchange Online

For many, Exchange Online – part of Microsoft Office 365 – is the natural replacement for Exchange Server 2010. This is my preferred option.

A hybrid migration to Exchange Online is the quickest way to migrate to the latest version of Exchange that is managed by Microsoft. Smaller organizations may not need the complexity of this hybrid setup, so they may want to investigate simpler migration options. Not sure which migration option is best for you? Microsoft has some great guidance to help you decide on the best migration path.

The cloud isn’t for everyone, but in many instances the reasons organizations cite for not considering the cloud are based on perception or outdated information, not reality. I often hear the word “compliance” as a reason for not considering the cloud. If this is your situation, you should first study the compliance offerings on the Microsoft Trust Center. Microsoft Office 365 fulfills many industry standards and regulations, both regionally and globally.

If you decide to remain on premises with your email, you also have options. But the choice might not be as obvious as you think.

Staying with Exchange on premises

Exchange Server 2019 might seem like the clear choice for organizations that want to remain on premises, but there are a few reasons why this may not be the case.

First, there is no direct upgrade path from Exchange Server 2010 to Exchange Server 2019. For most organizations, this migration path involves a complex multi-hop migration. You first migrate all mailboxes and resources to Exchange Server 2016, then you decommission all remnants of Exchange Server 2010. You then perform another migration from Exchange Server 2016 to Exchange Server 2019 to finalize the process. This procedure involves significant resources, time and planning.

Another consideration with Exchange Server 2019 is licensing. Exchange Server 2019 is only available to volume license customers via the Volume Licensing Service Center. This could be problematic for smaller organizations without this type of agreement.

Organizations that use the unified messaging feature in Exchange Server 2010 have an additional caveat to consider: Microsoft removed the feature from Exchange Server 2019 and recommends Skype for Business Cloud Voicemail instead.

For those looking to remain on premises, Exchange Server 2019 has some great new features, but it is important to weigh the benefits against the drawbacks, and the effort involved with the migration process.

Microsoft only supports Exchange Server 2019 on Windows Server 2019. For the first time, the company supports Server Core deployments and is the recommended deployment option. In addition, Microsoft made it easier to control external access to the Exchange admin center and the Exchange Management Shell with client access rules.

Microsoft made several key improvements in Exchange Server 2019. It rebuilt the search infrastructure to improve indexing of larger files and search performance. The company says the new search architecture will decrease database failover times. The MetaCacheDatabase feature increases the overall performance of the database engine and allows it to work with the latest storage hardware, including larger disks and SSDs.

There are some new features on the client side as well. Email address internationalization allows support for email addresses that contain non-English characters. Some clever calendar improvements include “do not forward” work without the need for an information rights management deployment and the option to cancel/decline meetings that occur while you’re out of office.

What happens if the benefits of upgrading to Exchange Server 2019 don’t outweigh the drawbacks of the migration process? Exchange Server 2016 extended support runs through October 2025, making it a great option for those looking to migrate from Exchange Server 2010 and stay in support. The simpler migration process and support for unified messaging makes Exchange Server 2016 an option worth considering.