Exchange It Up!
April 05, 2017
Exchange It Up!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Exchange
In my current position, I am responsible for migrating our United States origination from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange 2016. This includes the Exchange architecture, setup, migration and management.
Exchange 2016 is now our primary (and only) email solution for our entire origination across multiple continents.
The reason we switched to Exchange from Notes, is because Exchange provides up-to-date email technology, redundancy/failover, low cost of ownership, scalability and excellent performance.
- Exchange provides protection of sensitive data though DLP (Data Loss Prevention) and compliance regulations.
- Exchange makes use ease of access by integrating with Lync/Skype for Business/SharePoint as well as personal archives and large mailbox support.
- Exchange provides multi-layered anti-spam protection keeping your users safe from email threats.
- Exchange provides email anywhere through the use OWA, Outlook Anywhere, and mobile devices support with ActiveSync.
- Exchange provides different levels of admin access by using RBAC (Role Based Access Controls) to allow administrators and helpdesk to manage mailboxes and users efficiently.
- The main issue I have with Exchange is the web-based Administrative Center. Compared to the Exchange Management Console prior to Exchange 2013, it's slow and you don't have as many options. That being said, is the reason every Exchange admin should learn PowerShell to do their job efficiently.
- Exchange is quite the resource hog and does need some initial investment into server hardware/VM infrastructure and storage. Luckily Exchange can run on big, cheap disks quite well.
- Depending on the environment it does take quite a bit of knowledge to setup and configure. There are tons of guides out there to get you where you need to be.
- We have achieved 99% uptime for email services using Exchange 2016. By using a Database Availability Group (DAG), email is highly available and partnered with a load balancing solution, you can even run maintenance during production hours.
- Exchange makes it possible to work from anywhere by using Outlook On The Web (OWA) or Outlook Anywhere by providing external access to email. While on the go, Exchange provides email connectivity to devices and phones, so you never miss that important email.
- Exchange provides an excellent return on investment by providing "always on" email services with the benefit of being able to run on cheap storage - this allows for giant mailboxes allowing users to keep emails forever.
Microsoft Exchange provides cutting edge email technology, threat elimination, and ease of management compared to other email services. It provides protection from sensitive data leaks by using DLP (Data Loss Prevention) and highly available email services to users 24 hours a day. It's a short learning curve for users to learn Outlook and OWA (Outlook Web Access), and it makes it easy to collaborate across other platforms like Lync/Skype for Business and SharePoint.