Happy holidays everyone!

While I may be out of the office (or "OOF" as we blue badgers like say in our Exchange automatic replies emails), I didn't want you to miss out on some important updates to our Gold Messaging competency.

More specifically, we've made some great progress on the new technical assessments we're standing up as part of the requirements to achieve the Gold-level of the (still kind of new) Messaging competency.

As you likely recall, I shared with you that we had a bunch of the top Exchange SMEs (or subject matter experts) from our partner community in town last November to help us pen some brand spanking new technical assessments that will be required to attain the Gold Messaging competency. These new assessments focus on our "hero workloads" of Exchange, such as security, archiving, and voicemail, as well as advanced deployment scenarios for Exchange Online. For example, the latter assessment tests for your Exchange technical prowess--or what I like to call, your mad ninja skillz--around implementing a Hybrid Deployment with Office 365 and Exchange Server 2010 on-prem.

Good stuff, eh?

I certainly think so (although I'm likely biased, but I'm 100% in your camp).

Okay, you're probably wondering when these new assessments will be live and when you'll be required to pass them in order to "go for the gold".

When we first unveiled our plans for the new Messaging competency, we had hoped to make these new assessments available in late 2011/early 2012, and then require them for Gold in May 2012.

Well, based on your feedback and kind requests, we've decided to give these new exams a little more soak time and you the opportunity to prep a bit more for these new requirements.

This means these two new assessments will be live and ready for action (albeit in English-only) in February 2012. We'll add additional languages--including Japanese, Chinese, French, German and Brazilian Portuguese--later this spring (March or April for those of you in the southern hemisphere).

Adding to this good news: new training modules for these assessments are planned for availability before May 2012.  These will be great companions for your preparation activities, and we can't wait to share them with you (once they are done, that is).

Finally, the new technical assessments will become a required requirement starting in October 2012.  This gives you a little more than six months to get you and your team fully prepared to fulfill this forthcoming requirement for Gold.

With many of you approaching your MPN anniversary dates, this is a great time to get familiar with and ready for these new requirements in order to successfully re-enroll in any competencies your business may have already earned. Why not carve a little of your holiday break (when you're not carving the turkey or tofurkey) to do a quick review of these for the Messaging competency by visiting the MPN portal site here.

Enjoy!

Ian 
Group Product Manager 
Exchange Partner Marketing

While I may not have the authority or even the ability to formally declare a certain day of the year in the honor of a particular cause, program, person, etc., all of this holiday cheer going around—and the prospect of a long vacation just a few days away—has given me the confidence to declare today (December 15, 2011) Exchange ActiveSync Logo Program Day!

That’s right!

Happy Exchange ActiveSync Logo Program Day 2011!

Oh, before I go on to why we have things to celebrate today vis-à-vis the EAS Logo Program, it’s important to note that your humble Exchange partner community blogger has not confused EAS for Esperanto.  So, those of you who are celebrating Zamenhof Day today, I think there’s enough room for the two.

Gaja Esperanto tago!

Alright, on to the good stuff for you, the Exchange Partner ecosystem that makes this business of ours hum.

Just a little more than eight months ago, we unveiled the Exchange ActiveSync Logo Program in an effort to better help you help our mutual customers identify which EAS devices will deliver the best possible mobile experience. Effectively, we sought out to partner closely with handset manufacturers and mobile operators to establish a baseline of critical EAS functionality and then over time expand the expected level of capabilities for (again) the best possible mobile email experience.

To give you the latest and greatest on the program, I’ve asked Jim Lucey from my team, who looks after this program as part of his focus on Exchange ISV and hardware partners to fill us in:

I can’t believe it’s already been eight months since we started the Exchange ActiveSync Logo Program. A number of new devices have just been added to the program, including Nokia OS devices, as well as Windows Phone 7.5 devices.  And there are even a number of Android OS devices beginning the certification process.

For those of you just learning about this, the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) Logo Program was designed to test mobile email devices using the EAS protocol, to ensure that customers and IT Pro’s have a seamless experience with setup, support and use of qualified devices. We have heard from you the increasing diversity of mobile devices your employees use to access company resources, is one of your top concerns. Many of these devices use Exchange ActiveSync for mobile email, but they are not all implemented the same. As such, it is difficult to find out what is supported on each device. The EAS Logo Program is intended to provide a baseline for EAS functionality on these mobile devices.

“So, what is new?”, you may ask… Well, we’ve recently added the following new qualified devices to the program website and are excited to share the growing list of EAS Logo devices for customers:

• Nokia 600, 700, 701 running on Symbian Belle
• Nokia N8, C6-01, C7-00, E6-00, X7-00 running on Symbian Anna
• Devices running on Windows Phone 7.5 (like the new Nokia Lumia, and other Windows Phones specific to your region)

And, beyond this, we have a number of Android devices we will be adding to this page in the coming weeks.  Please check back regularly!

Thanks,

Jim Lucey
Sr. Product Manager
Exchange Partner Marketing

Dankojn por la updates, Jim!

And, Happy Exchange ActiveSync Logo Program Day!

Ian
Group Product Manager
Exchange Partner Marketing

Hopefully by now you’ve all heard the news that Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 (or “SP2” as it is better known around the the halls of Buildings 31 and 32) is available for download.

As Kevin Allison, general manager of the Exchange customer experience team, shared in the aforementioned EHLO Blog post, this update includes a bunch of commonly requested fixes and a handful of new capabilities. A few of these are worth highlighting here, as they offer you some new and improved opportunities to connect with customers and drive new business.

“What are they, Ian?” you ask?

Let’s start with perhaps the most obvious, yet ever so important: Exchange 2010 SP2 gives you a chance to call on your on-prem customers and help get them upgraded to the latest and greatest release.

Many of you likely already have standing support contracts with your customers, so while this may not necessarily generate new revenue, it does keep Exchange top of mind.  SP2 also adds to your proof points that Microsoft continually adds value to Exchange (whether on-prem or online) and that it’s no accident this happens on a fairly regular rhythm.

And, if your customer still happens to be stuck on a previous release--like that strong workhorse of email servers Exchange Server 2003, which was released 8 years, 6 months, and 5 days back, but who’s counting--why not use this latest SP release as a chance to rekindle the conversation about upgrading to Exchange 2010 (or migration to Exchange Online where you can keep your customers on the latest and greatest release all the time, and spend your engagements helping them get more out of the software they license/subscribe to)?

Next, there’s the new Hybrid Configuration Wizard which is aimed at making it easier for you to help customers deploy and support hybrid scenarios with Office 365 and Exchange Server. As an Exchange partner, this is a new tool in your tool chest that gives you the ability to better plan and execute a large scale migration from on-prem to online, or even for those customers who will make a hybrid deployment (you know, some of their users in the cloud with Exchange Online and others on-prem with Exchange Server) a permanent fixture. You can learn more about this tool (and what a hybrid deployment is all about) by checking out this recently published TechNet article “Understanding the Hybrid Configuration Wizard”.

After you read through that bit, you can then (drumroll please) checkout the new Address Book Policies feature.  I know this is something that will excite partners, as many of you, some in person, have asked me in the past, “hey, Ian, when are you going to have something like address book segmentation in Exchange 2010?”

Good news: the wait is over and just like the HCW, there’s a fantastic TechNet article for you to learn more: “Understanding Address Book Policies”.

Now this last one also has special significance for our hosting partners.  In fact, you likely recall the post we did a few months back that shared our future plans around the “/hosting” deployment mode for Exchange 2010, and how Address Book Policies are a key component to the evolution. One of the things we promised in that October post, was some new guidance on how to use SP2 (and Address Book Policies) to configure and deploy a multitenant Exchange infrastructure.

Well, that guidance is also available for download via a post that went out on the EHLO Blog earlier today: “Exchange 2010 Service Pack 2 and Hosting”

And, as Greg writes in the above posting, there’s even a brand new TechNet page dedicated to this topic with a list of third-party control panel and hosting automation vendors that have been validated by our team in Building 32 for this new hosted model with SP2.

So, in conclusion, there’s a lot more in those 535.2 MB of bits than just new features and fixes.  There’s a ton of opportunity for you, our great Exchange partner ecosystem, to connect with customers, deliver new value, or even remind them of the great value they already have in both the software from us and the services you provide to help them realize the full potential of productivity it can offer.

Got more ideas or thoughts on SP2?

Share them here!

Ian
Group Product Manager
Exchange Partner Marketing