We are going to deep dive into the concepts of Exchange server Installation, Configuration, Disaster recovery, outlook data recovery and much more in this article series. And in this article, we will start the series by making a general introduction of corporate communication and Microsoft Exchange server.
Corporate Communication and MS Exchange Server
Electronic mail or E-mail is not a new concept nowadays. This was began in early 60’s. From that time onwards, lot of companies developing mail servers for different platforms, however the revolutionary began in 90’s. Microsoft, a giant software development company entered into the corporate communication world. They developed an enterprise application called Exchange server. The first product came out to the public was Exchange server 4.0. Slowly Microsoft started acquiring the market worldwide and today it holds more than 80 % customers.
Version History:
As I mentioned above, Microsoft Exchange server 4.0 was released first. From then on they have released these version mentioned below:
5.0, 5.5, 2000, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013 and the latest version is 2016
There are lot of architectural changes happened in each version to bring new features every time. Microsoft will always keen in listening their customer’s feedback to improve their product.
What is Exchange Server?
So what exactly it is? Why it is most important product nowadays? You might be wondering how it captured more than 80% market worldwide. To understand this we need to know what is it all about and its functionalities. It is basically an enterprise product, mainly used for business communication purpose. If any business needs a communication through e-mails, then it should have an in house communication system that handles their email flow. This product plays a major role to route all your emails communication worldwide. Recipients of your e-mail doesn’t have to have the same product at their end in order to receive your email. It can be anything but just have to listen the protocol (SMTP). So in simple words Exchange servers is used for exchanging your emails with other mail servers or to a different exchange servers by sending and receiving.
Evergreen Technology
Now you understood its basic functionality. Emails are a vital communication method in today’s world. So learning about an application which will facilitate this communication establishment with 80% customers worldwide, can help you to sustain in the market for longer time. We can consider this domain is an evergreen in an Information Technology industry. You don’t need to worry about learning all of these versions as some of them are not currently supported by its developer (Microsoft). You can concentrate on newer versions. Especially from Exchange 2010 onwards.
Cloud vs In-house Solution
You might have heard about the term called “Cloud”. Cloud is nothing but a set of servers hosted remotely with a perfect disaster recovery solutions to provide you a best SLA timeline. You don’t need to worry about maintaining the servers with latest patch and all. In order to understand the cloud technologies, you first need to get your hands on with on-premises or in-house server solutions. So it always recommended to learn the on-premises Exchange servers.
What is Covered in This Series?
I am in this industry for several years and got in-depth knowledge about this domain. In this series I am planning to share all my knowledge that I gained so far with you. Mostly about Exchange servers – Installation, configuration, troubleshooting, Exchange recovery and so on. I always believe learning is a never ending task. So happy learning!!
I will meet you in the next article in this series. Until then stay tuned 🙂
To be continued..
Author Introduction:
Sophia Mao is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including outlook recovery and word recovery software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com
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