Exchange 2013 CU9 Due

Exchange 2013 CU9 is due out next quarter. Apart from a Microsoft promised Shared Mailbox feature around recording Sent Items, we do not know what will be included in Exchange 2013 CU9 (Cumulative Update 9) .  But it is evident that the number of major bug fixes has dropped away, making the choice to migrate to Exchange 2013 CU9 an easier one. I advise my email migration customers to wait for a new Exchange platform version to “mature” before migrating to it, and Exchange 2013 CU9 certainly falls into that category, in my opinion.

Exchange 2013 Public Folders

Of interest to me is the consistent mention of Public Folder improvements within Exchange 2013, especially with the previous talk of Microsoft deprecating Public Folders. With my email migration consulting work I commonly see massive Public Folder implementations in Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010, and it is good to see Microsoft supporting this feature, and scaling it out. Another consistent theme is improvement to the OWA interface, adding more features.

The majority of migrations to Exchange 2013 will continue to be from earlier versions of Exchange (2007 or 2010), but I also see a steady stream of migrations off GroupWise and Lotus Notes onto Exchange 2013, or direct to Office 365.  Both GroupWise and Lotus Notes have seen major releases recently, but I am yet to see a migration off Exchange onto either – comments welcome !

Exchange 2013 CU9 Migration

Any customer migrating to Exchange 2013 CU9 can now focus on the actual email migration project without having to be too concerned about the reliability of the Exchange 2013 CU9 platform. Microsoft are still encouraging customers to move to their Office 365 cloud patform, but it is good to see on-premise Exchange 2013 going strong, and being improved through each CU release.