Exchang(e)ing my view and opinions ...
March 28, 2017
Exchang(e)ing my view and opinions ...
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Exchange
Microsoft Exchange is used across our entire organization with tens of thousands of users connecting on a daily basis. Until about 5 years ago we had a predominantly on-premise environment and only made some use of OWA and mobiles (Blackberries and ActiveSync). We then decided to move into a cloud approach and have moved our core mail system to Office 365 hosted by Microsoft. Exchange is primarily used for email between employees and other stakeholders, but also for calendar bookings and of late for room management for our extensive meeting and video conference facilities.
- I like the simplicity of the design. It fits in well with the other portions of Office 2016 and it is normally quite straightforward and easy to find - with some caveats...
- There is a lot of support for Microsoft Exchange out there. If you have a simple issue you will easily find the answer by searching on the internet. This includes videos, forums and a wide variety of sources for help. Sometimes there are more than one answer for what might be wrong but then there are normally experts you can consult.
- Microsoft has taken years to work on this product, and it probably provides the services that the market requires. I think it hardly sets a gold standard or benchmark in terms of innovation, but it is a good reference in terms of a stable and continuing evolving environment.
- I believe in some areas the way that Microsoft calls stuff it does make it intuitive for users to find. When I need to find the right option to tweak I find that I am often searching for other terms and generally just browsing through the options available hoping to find one that makes sense.
- With the advent of cloud I feel that Microsoft has been pushing quite heavily with cloud only options. The way this is implemented is not always that simple, and you might be in for a rough ride if you don't have the requisite infrastructure i.e. networks to support it. I suggest that most mailboxes should be set to only sync the latest 3-6 months worth of info, but I have run into some seriously unresolved issues when Microsoft deals with trying to resolve sync conflicts and doesn't do so very sharply.
- I thoroughly dislike the new functionality around @mentions - from what I have read it doesn't seem possible to switch this off at the moment. This style of introducing new functionality without offering people the ability to remove it again is a big risk when a product is as embedded as Microsoft Exchange. This breaks the update cycles, and the ability of IT management to ensure a stable and consistent platform remains available.
- I think I am fairly neutral with regards to impact from Exchange. Not sure it can be quantified as either positive or negative.
- The recent move to a cloud infrastructure has certainly implied more costs and as yet I haven't seen any increased returns.
- The obvious claim is that collaboration and productivity increases. I cannot confirm that this is the case. It is possible to email documents to single or multiple parties fairly quickly but some of the tracking and message recall features are unreliable and simply an hindrance. Are people more focused on tasks because they have access to instant email communication? Has data management improved or deteriorated as result of emailing files around?
- Gmail, Thunderbird, Lotus Mail and Postfix
For the Windows environment I think Exchange leads in terms of simplicity to install and operate. For an entire cloud solution as well as great support for tagging and mobility I think Gmail is moving into a close second. In the open source environment there seems to be a lot more granular control offered through Mail Transfer Agents like Postfix, but it is advancing fast with clients such as Thunderbird or Evolution.