You must have heard about Office 365 by now, the newly launched cloud service by Microsoft that offers Exchange Online and other Microsoft-hosted services such as SharePoint Online, Lync Online and Office Web Apps.  Before being dismayed however, Exchange administrators may want to first check out my arguments as to Why Office 365 is good for Exchange Administrators. In addition, those who have yet to explore Office 365 may want to take some time to read my earlier article on TheEmailAdmin titled A Closer Look at Exchange in Microsoft’s Office 365. Continue reading Using Office 365 Plan P with your Company’s Domain Name

Microsoft’s newly launched Office 365 offers powerful, intuitive controls for businesses looking to deploy a cloud-hosted collaboration and messaging solution.  I was able to get my own trial account activated in just 10 minutes, faster than any hosted Exchange providers that I’m aware of.  In addition, the presence of a free 30-day trial means that businesses and individuals can experiment with – or even deploy – various components of the service without having to part with a single cent. Continue reading A Closer Look at Exchange in Microsoft’s Office 365

You must have heard about the launch of Microsoft’s Office 365 last week, which promised end-users and businesses alike with a way to attain “anywhere access to email, documents, contacts, and calendars”.  Understandably, the availability of a Microsoft-supported and run Exchange offering may have resulted in some amount of anxiety with some administrators.

To get a better feel of Office 365, I spent some time last weekend figuring out the various packages, and have also signed up for a trial Office 365 account to get a hands-on feel of Microsoft’s latest – and arguably best - cloud-based offering.  Today, I want to share my experiences as to why Office 365 may actually be good thing for Exchange Administrators. Continue reading Why Office 365 is Good for Exchange Administrators

Exchange Server Resources

Are you a new administrator to Exchange Server?  Or perhaps you’ve been maintaining Microsoft’s flagship messaging server for a while now, and are looking for good resources that you can check back on regularly?  Of course, one of them would be none other than TheEmailAdmin, where we feature fresh content that is refreshed many times a week.

To save you the trouble of having to hunt for similar sites though, I’ve compiled a short list of some of the best Exchange resources for you below: Continue reading Top Exchange Resources to Check Regularly

The recent spike in security breaches resulting from meticulously planned and executed spear phishing attacks may have forced email administrators to start thinking of topics that they may never have considered previously, such as the repercussion of a hacked Exchange Server account, or the reasons why hackers would be interested in attacking your email server.  Indeed, you may have already read Securing Your Microsoft Exchange 2010 Server, and have duly implemented the various hardening measures that I’ve linked to in that article. Continue reading Simple Penetration Testing Strategies for Your Exchange Server

After a painstaking examination of the various pros and cons of signing up for a cloud-based email service and that of an on-premise deployment, your company finally decides on the latter option.  Before jumping into deployment phrase however, there remain a number of important decisions that need to be made first.  Today, I want to highlight some of these areas, and offer some suggestions that I hope will be helpful to administrator tasked with setting up Exchange Server. Continue reading Decisions to Make When Deploying an On-Premise Exchange Server

Despite the widespread use of instant messaging and the recent rise in the popularity of social networking tools, there is little doubt that the humble email remains the perennial form of digital communication for businesses today.  Its widespread use does imply the presence of the invariable blooper however, or of carelessly written messages that could come back to haunt you.  I call such situations the “Oops!” moment.

I’ve highlighted some of the most common ones below, and it is my hope that it can led to users exercising more caution before clicking on the “Send” button.  And yes, do feel free to chip in with a comment or two about similar mistakes that you may have witnessed, or have committed yourself.

Continue reading 5 Most Common ‘Oops!’ Moments with Email

Last week, I wrote the post 5 Reasons why Exchange Server will Remain Relevant, where I highlighted the reasons why I believe Microsoft’s flagship messaging server will be around for some time yet.  Moving on, I would like to address an issue that fast growing organizations restricted to on-premise deployment of Exchange Server may eventually find themselves at: that of deteriorating performance due to the invariable growth in the size and number of their mailboxes.

Obviously, the most straight-forward method of catering to growing needs would be to splurge on a new, more capable server, or to make use of load-balancing so as spread the workload across more machines.  Both options are costly however, and may entail significant disruption to get everything installed and properly configured.  Today, I would like to suggest some relatively simple upgrades that businesses can use to lengthen the lifespan of their existing Exchange Server hardware.

Upgrade your Server with Gigabit Ethernet

If your Exchange Server installation is still running off Fast Ethernet, then an upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet may yield perceivable improvements for your local clients.   This can be especially true for mid-sized organizations with large number of users on the LAN.  This is an attractive option due to the sheer simplicity of swapping in a new gigabit Network Interface Card (NIC), and is an upgrade that can be completed within existing maintenance windows.  In addition, the cost of a Gigabit Ethernet server adapter is cheap at just over a hundred dollars these days.  Of course, this is assuming core network switches are able to support your upgraded server hardware, which may entail the purchasing of a corresponding gigabit module if this is not the case.

Continue reading How to Lengthen the Life Span of Your Exchange Server

The prevalence of free and high-quality web-based email services has undoubtedly helped advance the prevalence of emails. Indeed, one of the first stops for a new Internet user these days would be to first pick up an email account or two at one of the free webmail providers.  Given the familiarity of users with web-hosted emails, should Exchange Administrators be at all concerned that Exchange Server would eventually lose its appeal?

Well, my personal opinion is that Exchange Server will continue to retain its relevance for some time yet, especially in the realm business. I’ve highlighted some of the reasons below.

Continue reading 5 Reasons why Microsoft Exchange Server will Remain Relevant

It is never good news to have servers compromised by hackers or corporate espionage.  Given the finite resources of any company however, the open secret is that not every computing node on the network can be equally well-protected.  As it is, priorities are often heavily skewed towards protecting servers running crucial Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) services, or publicly accessible Web servers.

What many businesses do not realize is how the humble email server is often overlooked and left under protected.  Yet it remains a front-facing server due to its location on the Internet, or in the DMZ that demarcates the Internet from the relatively safe harbor of the company intranet.

I want to highlight five repercussions of a hacked Exchange Server account today so as to illustrate the importance of ensuring that your Exchange Server is patched in a timely manner, as well as the need to ensure that adequate best practices and security defenses are put in place.

Continue reading 5 Repercussions of a Hacked Exchange Server Account