Ian Hameroff : E-Mail

Behind the Music: Exchange 2010 Demo at TechEd Europe 2009

ianhamer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:23:41 GMT

Well, it’s been a week and change since we formally launched Exchange Server 2010 at this year’s edition of TechEd Europe. The highlight of this announcement (in this humble blogger’s opinion) was the Exchange 2010 demo delivered in Stephen Elop’s keynote address to over 5,500 #TEE09 attendees.

As a quick aside, that TechEd keynote hall (Hall 25) at the Messe Berlin was HUGE!

I swear it could have been a zeppelin hanger at one point in its history.

Moving on…our Exchange product management team’s fearless leader, Julia White, was on stage with Stephen and did a bang up job landing a full range of Exchange 2010 IT Pro and user experiences. In case you haven’t had a chance to see if for yourself, you can watch the replay below (fast forward to 37:15 if you’d like to get right to it):

You can also watch it from the “The New Efficiency” Virtual Launch Experience via this link:
http://vepexp.microsoft.com/thenewefficiency/?s=16828

“What was in that demo environment?” you may ask.

I’m glad you asked, because I was the proverbial “Wizard of Oz” for this gig.

That’s right.

Heck, I’m even from the “Emerald City”! (Yes, that was a stretch, because I’m a New Yorker).

For nearly a month prior to November 9th, I drove the process of defining and building out the demo rig Stephen and Julia showed off that faithful day (with a bunch of help from fellow Exchange TPMers Astrid “It’s All About the DAGs” McClean and Ankur “Can You Read Me Now? Good! – Voice Mail Preview” Kothari).

You may recall my previous posting that took place shortly after I surfaced from my demo build lab (a/k/a our GM’s office). That was the day we had all of the demo gear boxed up, and shipped out for Berlin.

That’s always a little rough, bidding farewell to your demo rig, because you never really, really know what will show up on the other end. That’s not to say stuff ends up in the demo builder’s equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. You just always need to have your plans B through Z at the ready. In this case, my plan Z was to hightail it to a former boss’ home outside of London, England if the previous 25 plans failed.

I did take advantage of our killer Disk2vhd utility from Sysinterals (Thank you Mr. Russinovich) to take VHD snaps of the 5 systems. That was plan C.

Here’s a little bit of detail of the “behind the scenes” for this demo.

First, here is my “high tech” architecture diagram that I put together using ~~Visio~~…er… PowerPoint:

Yup, we had a nice collection of hardware backstage (and a second set running just in case we needed to failover due to demo gremlins).

It’s truly amazing to see the backstage at any of these major keynote events. It’s like a mission control, television studio, and Fry’s warehouse all wrapped into one.

The ten minute demo highlighted a ton of features around three major “New Efficiency” themes (as well as Exchange 2010 product pillars)

Flexible and Reliable

Online Move Mailbox – Julia kicked the demo off talking about the new efficiencies to be had with our new Mailbox Move capability. Users can stay connected throughout the move process (seriously!). To prove the point, Julia kicked off a mailbox move of the very mailbox she would be using throughout the demo. Funnily enough, one customer though we “scripted/faked” the mailbox move, since Julia’s experience was uninterrupted. No faking here!

Anywhere Access

Conversation View – Kicking off the mailbox move, Julia walked folks through the various Conversation View features (including Ignore Conversation) using Outlook 2010. One of the first round of applause (and there were around 10!) came when Julia made one of those very annoying conversations disappear with the Ignore button.
MailTips – Seriously, who doesn’t like MailTips? You know, those little speed bumps Exchange throws up right before you click Send. We got to see a few different MTs demoed, including what I like to call (and even got Stephen to say!) “X-Ray vision” into distribution groups.
Voice Mail Preview – Neat stuff. Get a speech-to-text preview of your voice mail messages. During this part of the demo, Julia highlighted the fact you can click anywhere on the text preview, and the audio file will start playing from that point (lovely blurry picture from the replay video):

So, my voice (since it was a voice mail I left Julia) bellowed out across the gigantic Hall 25 when Julia sort to find out if my message said “Exchange launch” instead of “Exchange lunch” (Honestly, both sound good right now).

A funny aside: during the demo, my good bud and old Windows Server colleague David Lowe sent me two text messages during my voice mail cameo:

”Dude! You’re <bleeping> famous!” followed by
“Why do you sound like Stephen Hawking?”

Thanks, David!

Stephen joined in the demo fun when he then showed the same voice mail preview experience using a Windows phone (running Windows Mobile 6.5):

Stephen also highlighted the new Outlook Mobile (for Windows Mobile 6.1 and 6.5) including showing off Conversation View on the mobile device.
Outlook Web App – Julia then took the opportunity to show off our third of “three screens”: the new Outlook Web App. She highlighted not only the Conversation View, but also our new integrated Office Communications Server 2007 R2 IM and presence features, the ability to send and receive SMS Text Messages, and other “universal Inbox” experiences.

Protection and Compliance

Transport Protection Rules- But wait, there’s more! Julia than switched gears to talk about a range of features that can help customers better manage risk. Specifically, the new Transport Protection Rules that can automatically apply Rights Management policies to messages while they are in transit.

The demo showed Julia sending an e-mail from Outlook Web App that is protected by a Transport Rule configured to watch for the phrase “launch plans”:

Not only did the e-mail get automatically protected (in Transport), Stephen opened the e-mail in Firefox and was able to read the message because of our new native support for IRM (that’s just another name for Rights Management) in Outlook Web App!

Stephen adlibbed an additional demo step in a rehearsal that we ended up adding to the demo. Basically, he tried to copy the phrase “Meeting Agenda” from the Rights protected e-mail, and paste it into the Outlook Web App search box. Even in Firefox, and even though this is a web browser (with no plug-ins for IRM) application, the Rights Management policy was enforced! I told Stephen that was a great addition to the demo, since the week prior (on the Bus Tour) many people asked “What about cut and paste?”, and Stephen showed off the experience to 5,500 folks (plus everyone who’s watched the replay)!
Hold Policy and Multi-Mailbox Search – Well, the demo story arc allowed Julia to show off some of our e-mail archiving, retention, and discovery features (my personal fav!). Since Stephen both deleted and purged (from his recoverable items) an important e-mail message, Julia had a chance to demonstrate the new Hold Policy and Multi-Mailbox Search:
Online Move Mailbox (Reprise) – Guess what? The entire demo was conducted while Julia’s mailbox was being moved from CONTOSOEX02 to CONTOSOEX01! I was little disappointed to learn from one customer that he thought we faked it (as mentioned earlier). Julia runs Get-MoveRequestStatistics at the end of the demo, and we see that the move was only 66% complete, “yet [she] remained connected and productive.”

Well, I could go on and on about the demo, but I’ll let the work stand on its own. It was HUGELY rewarding to work on this (even got to grow a beard), and how proud I am of the results.

Time to get back to digging out and getting ready for some vacation!

-- hama

Day 3 – Giggin’ in Amsterdam

ianhamer — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:25:01 GMT

Today, I officially kicked off my participation as a crew member of “The Bus Tour” (exciting, eh?)!

We started the day bidding farewell to contest winner Christopher, who was heading back to France ahead of TechEd. And, then Ken, Stephen, and I headed over to Compu’Train-BvO to do our first presentations of the day (and my first of the Tour). Following the training, the team at Compu’Train-BvO gave each us an awesome gift pack of treats from all around the Netherlands. A very appreciated present!

What ensued was an action packed, multi-location day of “The Bus” gigs across the greater Amsterdam area, including Dell and Info Support.

Once more, I’ll leave the rest to my third video:

There was a moment of panic as I briefly lost my business card case (a nice present from me misses). Luckily, it was just hidden beneath the presentation podium at Info Support.

The road brings many, many adventures!

I think I need to pick-up a copy of “On the Road”. My copy of this favorite Kerouac book is sitting a few thousand miles away.

-- hama

What? A Bus Tour Across Central Europe?

ianhamer — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:49:28 GMT

Hello world!

I’m being serious.

I’ve just resurfaced after spending nearly two weeks in a “executive keynote demo bunker”, building out a cool demo rig for a big upcoming event (wink, wink). Man, I had a beard and everything, and mostly sustained myself with Starbucks coffee, good humor, and the thousand degree temperatures that come with stuffing a bunch of demo hardware gear in a Building 31 office (READ: no fancy server room HVAC).

Luckily, we were able to squat in our GM’s office (who’s currently on leave), to construct a wicked 3 server, 2 client environment featuring the RTM code of every fan’s favorite, Exchange Server 2010.

But, before we get to that, I think it’s worth bringing you up-to-date on my next pending adventure (and I did choose the word “adventure” on purpose).

Starting November 2nd, from they wonderful Dutch city of Amsterdam, I will be “Getting on the Bus”.

To be clear, I’m not heralding the fact I plan to use the public transportation system in Holland.

I still might, but that’s neither here nor there.

What I am doing, is joining the second week of the two week, 11-city European road show featuring Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange Server 2010.

This is being driven (no pun intended) by our pals over in Microsoft Learning, as part of the whole “Born to Learn” program.

But, wait!

There’s more!

When I say I’m “getting on the bus”, I literally mean I’ll be living on a bus for 5 straight days.

That’s right.

Me, and a team of heavy hitters across Windows, Windows Server, the Certification Program, and (yes!) Exchange, will be doing events during the day, and like any good rock tour of the IT kind, we’ll be boarding the bus that evening to make it to the next city before dawn.

I think there’s a Grateful Dead song that comes to mind here.

“So, what kind of bus is this?” you ask.

This is no mere mortal bus, or even an R.V.

Instead, it comes from the cats over in the U.K. called Jumbocruiser.

We get to spend our travel timing on a Premium Double Decker, model T300, bus, which sleeps up to 16, and offers such amenities as “especially spacious downstairs” featuring “deep and comfortable seats”, and our own personal bunk complete with curtain, video game system, and snappy sheets.

While the video I linked above gives one perspective, fear not.

I’ve just received my new Flip Video camera, which I intend using to provide as close to daily vblogs of “life on the bus”. I also just ordered a cellular aircard for some data link capacity for the times I’ll be starring out the window, watching the German country side go by, and checking e-mail.

Wow, eh?

As I will be terminating my bus journey in Berlin, I feel bit like the Olympic Torch relay for our grand launch at TechEd Europe 2009.

To that end, here’s my tour of scheduled appearance cities (in case you want swing by):

Monday, November 2nd – Amsterdam, Netherlands
Tuesday, November 3rd – Frankfurt, Germany
Wednesday, November 4th – Munich, Germany
Thursday, November 5th – Vienna, Austria
Friday, November 6th – Prague, Czech Republic

More details on the actual events and locations of can be found by visiting http://thebustour.com/thebus/tour-dates.

You can even track our progress through the Live Bus Tracker (powered by Glympse). As I write this post, the bus (a/k/a Career Express) is en route across France, traveling at 60 MPH:

The gang has even recorded a short video of me for their blog, to give you a sense on what the heck I’ll be doing throughout the 2nd week of the tour:

After all of this, I’ll be settling in Berlin for the week of TechEd Europe, and looking forward to getting a chance to catch up with folks over there (especially after the big keynote).

Well, in those immortal words utter for seemingly a million years at the conclusion of every Saturday Night Live guest hosts monologue:

“We’ve got a great show…er…bus tour! Exchange 2010, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 are here. So, stick around, and we’ll be right back!”

Cue music.

-- hama

Get Into the “New Efficiency”. I Did!

ianhamer — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:10:16 GMT

Wow!

What a crazy run it has been, as we’ve been ramping for a number of milestones for the big launch.

For example, I’ve spent this week building out a real killer Exchange Server 2010 demo rig for some important, upcoming events. In addition to that, I have been conducting briefings with top tier tech press reviewers, showing off the Exchange 2010 RTM experiences.

Before that, it was all about The New Efficiency, and helping deliver content, presentations, and yes, even a demo or two, as part of this virtual launch event.

What?

You haven’t been up to thenewefficiency.com yet?

If you need some motivation to visit a pretty cool “virtual launch experience” (that’s what the all the Web 2.0 cats call these things) featuring the line up of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange Server 2010, well, check this out:

That’s right: it’s me!

Among the Exchange 2010 sessions I deliver on such things our integrated e-mail archiving, retention and discovery capabilities, I’m doing the Exchange demo in Chris Capossela’s keynote.

To check out my online performance, in my Microsoft “dress blues”, just go up to http://www.thenewefficiency.com and click on the “Watch the Keynotes” icon:

And, select the “Technologies for the New Efficiency" with Chris Capossela” option. You can watch the whole thing (which I do recommend), or just fast forward to 35:10 to see Chris hand things over to me.

In the demo, I highlight:

Outlook Web App
Integrated IM and Presence
Conversation View and the Ignore Conversation
Voice Mail Preview
Outlook 2010
Personal Archive
Transport Protection Rules, and
Multi-Mailbox Search

It’s a good line up, and I hope you enjoy it. I also hope you’ll explore the rest of the Exchange 2010 content (including my two other sessions).

One fun fact: the Microsoft Studios set used to recorded this demo, once served as set for the MSNBC talk show, the Ron Regan Show. And, they used a bunch of gel in my hair…I swear, it could have stopped a bullet.

More to come on the fun…wait till I tell you about my bus tour of Europe the first week of November!

-- hama

So, Why Add an Archive to Exchange?

ianhamer — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:36:27 GMT

Last Wednesday I started with a brief overview of the integrated archiving, retention, and discovery capabilities we’re launching with Exchange Server 2010.

Good, right?

Well, a common question I get from customers, partners, analysts, our field and the like is:

“So, why are you adding an archive to Exchange?”

Great question…glad you asked!

This is the purpose of today’s post: what’s our motivation.

The Background

For some time now, we’ve been hearing a bunch from customers about how increased regulatory and compliance pressures are driving the need for better preservation (a/k/a retention) and discovery (a/k/a search) of e-mail data.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that e-mail is considered a valuable source corporate data, and is often sort after in legal, compliance, and personnel matters. Even the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) were amended in 2006 to up the ante regarding the “disclosure or discovery of electronically stored information” (READ: e-mail). On top of the rule changes, a quick search with your favorite Internet search engine reveals that e-Discovery of e-mail is on the rise. I think the Enterprise Strategy Group has a stunning (albeit a little dated) stat regarding this trend:

“A survey by Enterprise Strategy Group shows that 91% of organizations with more than 20,000 employees have experienced an electronic discovery involving e-mail in the past 12 months.”

And, that’s just the discovery side of things.

What about adhering to regulations around data retention?

We all have our “favorites” here, like the internal controls required with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act or 3-6 year retention period that comes with SEC Rule 17a-4.

One of the most interesting retention policies I’ve heard comes from a conversation I had with a European-based health care provider. They stated that they need to retain patient records (which includes e-mails between doctors and those they treat) for a period of 6 months before the patient’s birth and 10 years after their death, or 125 years (which ever comes first).

Yikes, right?

Well, it’s pretty clear that every business, agency, and organization is held to fairly stringent e-mail preservation and discovery rules. That said, when we took a look at the adoption of adequate e-mail archiving and discovery procedures and tools, we found that only ~20% of Exchange customers have taken these steps (based on both internal Microsoft research and findings from the leading industry analyst firms).

To quote a U.S.-based customer I spoke with on Thursday, “why am I not surprised?”

So, that means 4 out of 5 are doing nothing, relying on backup tapes, or even prayer. For some, the latter is just a matter of “waiting for the other shoe to drop” before they can get the attention and funding necessary to affect a positive change.

As you would expect, we dug a little deeper to find out why this may be the case. What we found was it really came down to two things: 1) Experience and 2) Costs.

The Experience at a Cost

Many e-mail archiving approaches introduce an environment that can be unfamiliar to your users. For example, we’ve heard that it’s not uncommon that your users experience a disruption of their normal Inbox management workflow when archiving product add-ons are, well, added to Outlook or OWA. Search is another common scenario that exemplifies this concern. Your users may have one experience when searching their live e-mail, and yet another, outside of their familiar e-mail clients when they need to search within their archive.

And, it’s worth mentioning that when e-mail is removed from Exchange (a method oft employed by archiving solutions), your users can no longer benefit from the full fidelity of either new or existing Exchange features, like the enhanced conversation view we’ve introduced in Exchange Server 2010 or the mailbox resiliency features (like Database Availability Groups and online mailbox moves).

When it comes to administrative tasks, there could be a range of challenges from difficultly in deploying those add-ons I just mentioned, to having separate tools for conducting multi-mailbox searches across archived and live e-mail for e-discovery, or even having to learn and implement yet another infrastructure that needs to be reliable and easy to access.

Lastly, is cost. Licensing and deploying yet another critical piece of infrastructure risks both increased costs and administrative overhead. This includes the costs around the end-user training required to teach new e-mail habits and practices (or the extra helpdesk calls when someone needs to find something that’s not in Outlook).

This may just be a summary of our findings, but certainly would appreciate hearing what other barriers you may have come across in evaluating such a solution (READ: how about some comments? <g>).

The Eco-System?

Let me stop here for one second and address a question that may be coming to mind:

“What about 3rd party solutions?”

Well, it’s simple: Exchange has and shall continue to benefit from an eco-system of solutions that add great value to the platform (cue marketing fanfare).

No seriously, it’s true.

In fact, we’re already working with many of these very same e-mail archiving partners, helping to map out how they can utilize our extensibility features to add to the capabilities we’re shipping in Exchange 2010, all while delivering the user and IT Pro experiences our Exchange customers come to expect from us by keeping the e-mail in Exchange (more on that later!).

The Exchange 2010 Difference

No matter what your organization’s motivation is for adopting an e-mail archiving solution (e.g., rid yourself of PST files, mailbox management, e-Discovery or even regulatory compliance), I think you’ll find our approach of interest. As I said back in my last post, a key differentiator about what we’re doing here is the fact you get to preserve the user and the IT Pro experience while you’re preserving and enabling easy discovery of your e-mail data. And, that is a big reason why we’ve added these features. If we can help drive up adoption of proper e-mail retention and discovery, everyone wins.

And, this may be something of a paradigm shift for many of you, i.e., keeping e-mail in Exchange to archive it.

To be clear, we’re not shipping a stand alone e-mail archiving product here, but instead are adding integrated archiving, retention, and discovery capabilities right into our e-mail server (and a market leading one at that!).

This means not only do you get the benefits from these e-mail retention and discovery features, you also gain from all of the new mailbox resiliency (read: HA and DR) and storage platform advancements we continue to deliver in every release of Exchange.

There’s still a lot more to talk about in this space, and that will be kicked off in my next post about the Personal Archive bit.

Blog Reader Poll or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Add Comments to Ian’s Blog…

This week’s question: so, what’s your motivation for archiving your e-mail?

-- hama

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Switch On Your Internet…

ianhamer — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:53:48 GMT

What a long post title to basically share a link to a recent video I recorded with Microsoft U.K.’s very own Eileen Brown (leading IT Pro evangelist, and social media expert) about our recent unveiling of Exchange 2010:

This video was shot just minutes after spending nearly seven hours presenting and facilitating the Exchange sessions, with fellow Redmond Exchange team’er Ed Banti, at the Reading, U.K. edition of INTERACT 2009.

Eileen even has a blog about that: Interact 2009 and Exchange 2010

Well, enjoy the video.

And, don’t forget to check out all the Exchange 2010 resources (and the beta download) available at microsoft.com/exchange/2010.

-- hama

World, Meet Exchange 2010

ianhamer — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:57:32 GMT

After spending more than year working on the Exchange product management team, I can finally start talking about all the cool stuff the Exchange team has been building over the last several years. That’s right, today we took the wraps off, dispensed with all the secrecy, and publicly announced Exchange 2010 (Woo-hoo!):

Microsoft Unveils Exchange 2010 With Public Beta

As the title of the announcement spells out, we also released a downloadable beta of the on-premises server product. And, to complete the “unveilment” hat trick, there are a series of new Exchange 2010 websites up and running across Microsoft’s various web properties. You can best reach them all from microsoft.com/exchange/2010.

Another thing you may have noticed, is the new(ish) look and feel around the Exchange brand. We call this the Dynamic Grid, and you should recognize it from the other Microsoft server products like SQL, System Center, and Forefront. Not necessarily the coolest feature of Exchange 2010, but again something we can finally start using more widely as we talk to the release.

So, what’s so special about this release? There’s a ton…no seriously, we’ve packed a lot of great new features and enhancements into Exchange 2010. In fact, one of the biggest and newest elements introduced in this release is now my primary area of focus: Archiving and Retention.

There’ll be plenty more about this space, and the rest of the features that we’re bring to market.

For now, I’d rather share some links to a number of great review articles that have started to publish now that the curtain has been lifted.

Fellow technical product manager and Outlook Live video star, Jim Lucey and I went on the road a few weeks back to brief these various technical reviewers, and I’m really pleased with the results:

InfoWorld: First Look: Exchange 2010 beta shines by Martin Heller.
eWeek: Microsoft Exchange 2010 Beta Looks Solid from Core to Cloud by Jim Rapoza
Windows IT Pro: Exchange 2010 Beta Launched: Come and Get It! by B.K. Winstead (with pointers to Tony Redmond’s full review)
PC Mag: Hands on with Exchange 2010 Beta by Mario Morejon

One of my personal favorite lines comes from the Windows IT Pro piece:

“I had a conversation with Microsoft senior product managers, Jim Lucey and Ian Hameroff and asked them if it should be pronounced "Twenty-Ten" or "Two Thousand and Ten." In keeping with their mantra of flexibility and choice, they said it's up to you.”

Goofy?

Yes.

But, that’s how Jim and I roll.

And, yes, flexibility and choice is more than just a marketing buzz phrase around this release. I hope that by downloading the beta bits, reading up on the details on Microsoft.com, and watching the great TechNet Edge videos (like this one on Voice Mail by Ankur Kothari) you’ll see that too.

Programming Note: Tonight, Ed Banti and I will be talking about Exchange 2010 at the “Vista Squad” user group meeting here in London. If you happen to be in London, come check it out.

-- hama

PS: As mentioned previously, I’m over in the U.K. (now in London) for the week, and I think I just saw Ray Parker, Jr. doing a parody version of his (in)famous Theme from Ghostbusters, dressed as a double-decker bus conductor, in a 118 118 T.V. advert. Oh, my.

Now Available on Twitter...Watch Out Web 2.0!

ianhamer — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:42:00 GMT

Well...in keeping with the spirit of my long blogosphere absences, I'm back (once again) to let you know that I'm now rightsizing my blogging to micro-blog levels.

That's right, I've gone off and started Twitting.

Or, is it Tweeting.

Ugh.

Nevertheless, I welcome you to follow not just my random acts of blogging on this TechNet blog, but also learn fun facts about such nonesense as "I'm at Qwest Field, having a few beers in the club before first kick. Go Sounders!", or more aligned with my work in the Exchange product management team, "Just spent part of the morning playing with MS Mail 3.5 with ankbomb". (NOTE: "ankbomb" is a fellow product manager, focused on our voice mail workload made possible by Exchange)

So, go ahead and follow me at twitter.com/hameroff.

-- hama

PS: Oh, yeah. I'm off to the U.K. tonight for this year's installment of INTERACT, INTERACT2009 (if you were following me on Twitter, you'd already know that by now <g>).

A New Recorded Video on Outlook Live

ianhamer — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:12:00 GMT

I’m writing this post following a day on the slopes, so while my spirit remains strong and purposeful, my body does not.

(NOTE: No broken limbs or missing teeth, but I did “accidently” wonder onto a black diamond trail, and cruised my good pal and Exchange team colleague Jim for telling me to “meet him up there.” My quasi-intermediate skiing skills enabled me to get down the hill, albeit with several falls and bruised ego.)

Luckily, KC and I had pre-recorded this new TechNet Edge video we posted yesterday to outline our latest news around ~~Exchange Labs~~ Outlook Live (a service we are running to deliver Exchange “14” powered e-mail to schools and universities via our http://get.liveatedu.com/).

Take a look at the video and let’s us know what you think!

My demo section was shot in my humble building 31 office, and thanks to Adam Bomb’s camera work, he was able to hide most of the clutter I attempted to stash out of shot.

And, if you really dug the desktop picture I had on my Windows laptop, you can download it from my Flickr site (NOTE: a shameless self-promotional plug):

So, what’s with the “shameless self-promotional plug”?

Well, I thought it was fitting since we announced that the Government of the state of São Paulo, Brazil will be offering Live@EDU to “more than 6 million students of the state", I’d share a picture I took in the city of Sao Paulo back in December (while visiting family).

That’s all for now, time to hit the ibuprofen!

-- hama

Come and Get Your EWS On....Mac

ianhamer — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:01:09 GMT

My friends and colleagues over at the MacBU have shipped a beta of Entourage that features new support for EWS (a/k/a Exchange Web Services). This replaces the previous WebDAV approach used in both previously releases of Entourage and Exchange Server.

More details here for IT Pros:

Entourage for Exchange Web Services

Also, check out my bud Mike's blog posting up on the "The Office for Mac Team Blog":

Entourage for Exchange Web Services Beta is Live!

Good stuff, if you ask me (that is, someone who does not use a Mac or Entourage, but digs EWS).

-- hama

More UC Than You Can Shake an E-mail At...

ianhamer — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:39:40 GMT

Hey, our Microsoft Unified Communications blog is on fire as of late. After a longer hiatus than I took with this blog, the UC team (of which I'm a member of) is blogging like gangbusters.

Check it out:

Unified Communications Group Team Blog

-- hama

Okay, Time for Our Take

ianhamer — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:38:26 GMT

Not that I want to turn a TechNet blog into a battleground Lotus vs. Exchange tit-for-tat, but in furtherance to my posting on Friday (re: Notes momentum meets Gartner reality) here's a link to a good Q&A with David Scult on the very subject of Exchange Mo':

Making Sense of the Messaging and Collaboration Market

It's short and sweet, and support with some third-party commentary too.

You can't help but feel good when we get to say things like:

"More than 10 million users are making the switch from Lotus Notes and Domino to Exchange and SharePoint, including more than two million in the last six months alone."

-- hama

Setting the Record Straight(er)

ianhamer — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:06:22 GMT

Lot's of great buzz around the messaging space with the run up to IBM's Lotusphere. Lotusphere is kicking off on Sunday.

Here's a neat Computerworld article about where the PR "rubber" meets the Gartner analyst "road":

"Au contraire: Exchange's lead over Notes actually 'getting bigger and bigger,' says Gartner"

"While IBM argued today that its Lotus Notes collaboration software was turning the tide against the market leader, Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange, a Gartner Inc. analyst said that's not the case.

"I don't believe that in either revenue or user seat share, that IBM is closing the gap [with Microsoft]," Tom Austin, a Gartner analyst, told Computerworld today. "The gap is getting bigger and bigger."

IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment."

-- hama

The Audacity of Mobile E-mail

ianhamer — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:53:06 GMT

As both an ol' security guy, and now a nearly seasoned e-mail server guy (okay, it's been one calendar year since I moved over to the Exchange team), I really dig this whole discussion around the future of President-elect Obama's BlackBerry.

He is, much like many CrackMobileE-mailers (like myself with my growing collection of WinMo devices), a self-confessed mobile e-mail junkie.

However, national security concerns, etc. demand something more than an off-the-shelf device for the "E-mailer-in-Chief" to be issuing important orders (like righting the American economy) or taking care of other important things (such as getting a playoff system in place of NCAA football's crappy BCS system).

Look, I'm a big fan of the soon to be 44th president, but I'd have to admit I wouldn't want to be seen with Mr. Obama while he is carrying this "organizationally approved" smart phone:

More details:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10141398-38.html?tag=pop

By comparison, I am loving my HTC Touch HD. I do miss having 3G data rates, but I love the longer battery life and the screen. The virtual keyboard is way more functional than the iPhone's (even on the small screened HTC Touch Diamond I have), and the screen kids ass. We still need to work on our touch (lower-case 't' and no pun intended), but it is a very fun and functional device for me. It has officially earned the title of 'Best Windows Mobile Phone I've Owned", unseating the Touch Diamond.

-- hama