Editor’s note: Michael Atalla is the Director of Product Management for Exchange Server and Exchange Online. He’s here today to share some interesting content from the world of Exchange and share plans for next week during the Microsoft Exchange Conference 2012 (MEC 2012).

As Gray mentions, next week is the first Microsoft Exchange Conference in 10 years -- in fact, I am finalizing this blog from the Seattle airport waiting to board my flight to Orlando for the conference. When we last held MEC, email was the main way people in the workplace communicated – today the way people work has expanded to include social networking and collaboration with products like SharePoint, Yammer, Lync and Skype to name a few. Back then, Exchange was an email server which dabbled in calendaring. Today it includes email, shared calendars, address books, voice mail, spam and virus filtering, data loss prevention, archiving and e-discovery solutions -- all in one product and cloud service -- tightly integrated with the capabilities of SharePoint and Lync.

This week we began a series of blogs on the Exchange Team Blog (known affectionately as "You had me at EHLO" for those who follow the space closely) focusing primarily on the expanded cloud capabilities of the new Exchange.

  • We began the week with a post focusing on the new and improved Exchange Online Protection service.
  • We also compared Exchange Online and Exchange Server, highlighting the key factors to consider when deciding between on-premises and moving to the cloud, along with highlighting the hybrid deployment options supported with Exchange Online.
  • Yesterday, we had a two part post, the first focusing on deploying hybrid and the second on managing hybrid.
  • And earlier today we had a post on managed availability and monitoring.

Next week, we’ll be back on both the Office Next and EHLO blogs to share more about the new Exchange, with additional information on the new capabilities in security and compliance, including posts on archiving, eDiscovery, and Data Loss Prevention (DLP).

Thanks for your interest in the Office Preview and Exchange and I hope to see you at MEC 2012 next week!

- Michael Atalla, Director Product Management, Exchange Server and Exchange Online