Exchange 2003 migration toolkit Released!!!

Just before few Minutes Microsoft Exchange Team released the Exchange 2003 migration toolkit in the EHLO Blog, This is a collection of various resources and Tool kits that will help Administrators to plan for a successful migration to the latest version of Exchange Server (Excluding Exchange 2013) or to Office 365 with either Hybrid or a fully Cloud deployment.

As I stated earlier during one of my post The End is Near for "Legacies"... Exchange Server 2003 is reaching its end of support on April 8 2014 along with windows XP and other products and also I mentioned in one of earlier post that I will be writing on this topic soon and today this EHLO blog post made me to write this post for readers. Exchange is a Business Critical application and its importance varies from one Organization to another, On a Technical perspective its always good to upgrade the environment to the latest version if possible or at least to the currently supported version which gives us more advantages of utilizing the new enhancements for having a Highly Available solution, DAG for example with Exchange 2010 etc. and upgrading Exchange not only requires hardware configuration changes it requires some Schema changes to be made in AD which eventually makes Organizations not to go for immediate upgrade to the Next version of Exchange as we have many other applications which are critical and rely on the Legacy Windows Server Operating system and rest of the story is known to all Administrators.

When we are nearing the End of Support for critical product like Exchange Server in our case its Exchange Server 2003 its good to plan and migrate to the next version at the earliest because if we missed we will be in a Unsupported scenario and Microsoft team will not support any of the cases further post this deadline and will be under pressure if anything breaks unexpectedly.  Planning for Migration is not easy with Exchange Server 2003 as it involves downtime for users, as mailbox moves are offline moves and also we have to plan some additional changes to the way free busy is published, Mail flow configuration and most important and painful one the "Public Folders".

Most Organizations are now targeting Cloud and Office 365 is the preferred one and if you are planning for Migrating your Exchange 2003 Environment and also have plans for adopting Cloud based model then this is the best option and we have detailed Instructions available from Microsoft to achieve this with proper guidance and support. but most of the Organizations are now not ready for Cloud deployment in their immediate road-map as they have other factors to consider and the best approach for them is to Upgrade to Exchange Server 2010, which is the preferred upgrade method that can be accomplished successfully with proper design and planning. Already "N" number of customers migrated like this and even I have worked on such migration for a Large Enterprise Organization, though there are few pain points post migration the Environment is stable. Also we cannot upgrade or co-exist with Exchange Server  2013 which is unsupported and going for 2007 is not a wise option.

Additional to the Migration Tool Kit check out this below resources to migrate from Exchange Server 2003 to Office 365 or to Exchange Server 2010. There are many resources available outside and below are few vital ones which are useful to begin your journey and these resources assisted me for my upgrades, specially the ones for Exchange 2010 which I personally recommend to others who approach me to get advice on these transitions.

Step-By-Step: Migration of Exchange 2003 Server to Office 365 from CANITPRO Blog written by our MVP Kelsey Epps

Your Step by Step Guide to Migrating from Exchange Server 2003 to 2010 from ExchangeServerPro written by our MVP Paul Cunningham

Upgrade Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 from Simple Talk written by our MVP Japp Wesselius

Finally, Access the Migration Toolkit here: Exchange 2003 migration toolkit

In addition to the above resources read this latest Redmond Magazine post, which explains the issues that could occur if we don't migrate on time and the requirements we need keep in place to make things work as per Microsoft guidelines and also over other additional benefits we could receive if we opt for their hosted solution.

Microsoft Warns Exchange 2003 Losing Support Next Month 

Windows PowerShell in Office 365

This post is a vital one for all the Office 365 Administrators and I believe most of you would have already know about this topic and if not then this is the right time to know and utilize the same for Managing Office 365 Environment effectively with the help of PowerShell.

PowerShell is not new for Administrators as it has become their part of everyday life, where we work with it at least once a day whether it is for a smaller requirement or a complex one. I have written few posts on PowerShell with reference articles and E-books available around the community to give you a strong Idea on the topic and to acquire adequate knowledge to work with PowerShell and manage the Environment effectively at ease. You can refer them here to begin.

If you are an Office 365 Administrator and your Organization is using all the three services Exchange, Lync , SharePoint Online then you are lucky that you will get the chance to work with all these three products and most of your work will for sure rely on Remote PowerShell. and to make this ease this guide will help. If you are a Hybrid Customer then you are even more Lucky that you will work on both On premises and Cloud seamlessly.

Microsoft team published a Guided TechNet post by the end of Last year which acts as a Resource Center containing all the major topics required for managing the Office 365 Environment with PowerShell and it covers wide range of topics from the Basic level to the Advanced.

Access the post here : Windows PowerShell in Office 365

Update:

Additionally review the below TechNet post to know the advantages of using Powershell to manage Office365.

Six Reasons Why You Might Want to Use Windows PowerShell to Manage Office 365

Moving from ADFS to Dirsync Password Hash!

I have already written few posts on ADFS and Dirsync and the most important one is the comparison article "ADFS Vs Password Hash" where I referenced a TechTarget post written by MVP Michael Van Horenbeeck which explains clear details on variation between the two and how they function along with my earlier posts on the two which gives you more insight on the products.  If you read this you will get to know more on these and decide which one to utilize based on the requirement.

Dirsync Password Hash is a new feature and many Organizations even the smaller ones need to deploy ADFS for Single Sign-On but they actually need that only for accessing O365 resources and it was just a Same-Sign On requirement as there are only few users and does not rely more as a larger enterprise to deploy ADFS and post the availability of DirSync password Hash some Organizations started to think about enabling this feature and remove the ADFS servers and doing this is not a easy task as it requires proper planning and implementation.

Today I saw an excellent post from Office 365 Tip of the Day blog from our renowned MVP Jethro Seghers, inhere he clearly explains about the detailed steps to follow to move from ADFS to Dirsync Password Hash with the proper steps to convert the existing federated domain to non federated and provides us a script which will check and convert all our user accounts to non federated accounts, post which we can perform the rest of the tasks in implementing Dirsync Password Hash and remove the ADFS servers.

Access the post here: CONVERTING ADFS DOMAINS TO DIRSYNC WITH PASSWORD SYNC, STEP BY STEP

Additionally, check this Office 365 Community Blog on the topic from Microsoft which discuss more on this switch-over and references to get this setup.

Switching from ADFS to using Password Hash Synchronization

Also its still possible to use Set-MsolDomainAuthentication cmdlet to Change the domain authentication between standard identity and single-sign on, but the above Method is recommended.

In scenarios when your ADFS Environment is completely unavailable only above Set-MsolDomainAuthentication method works and more information in detail is explained in the below article.

Office 365 – Using Password Sync as a Backup to AD FS

*There are certain gotchas to watch out for once you move to Dirsync Password Hash and knowing this will help you manage your environment at ease without compromising Information Security, to know more on this read the below excellent post from Perficient. 

Office 365 – DirSync Password Sync: Did You Know?

Security plays a major role when you sync passwords and below post from Cogmotive explains how secure Dirsync Password Hash feature descriptively.

How Secure is DirSync with Password Synchronisation?

Also Read the below post over Encryption limitations.

AAD Password Sync, Encryption and FIPS compliance 

Also on a future plan Microsoft team is working making both of this feature work hand in hand for Disaster Recovery scenario. I have got this update from the latest Office365 FM podcast where Microsoft Senior Program Manager "Jono Luk"provided an insight on the same and you can check my earlier post "Microsoft Future RoadMap for Identity and Access Management with O365"  for more details.

Update:

As stated above Microsoft team now made Password hash work as a backup for ADFS to provide a highly available Single Sign-on infrastructure and the below TechNet Wiki post is updated reflecting this with other recent enhancements and step by step walk-through instructions to achieve this covering various key scenarios.

Check here: DirSync: How To Switch From Single Sign-On To Password Sync

In scenarios when the ADFS infrastructure is completely down and no connectivity possible between the ADFS environment and MSOL then Set-MsolDomainAuthentication method is alone reliable which is discussed and explained in the comments section of the above Wiki post.

This really makes us feel Microsoft is doing a great deal of home work in analyzing possible ways of providing highly available service  as promised, that makes customers to adopt their service and consistently have a better support experience.

Exchange Server Namespace Planning

I am writing this a post a bit late today after an excellent blog post on Exchange Server 2013 Namespace planning published recently in EHLO blog by our Ross Smith MSFT and inhere he clearly explains the Namespace requirements needed with Earlier version of Exchange server products like Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 in comparison with Exchange 2013 which simplifies most of the requirement and you will end up with having few name spaces and also have the ability to have single namespace through out the Exchange Organization for High availability and Site Resilience.

When it comes to Exchange Deployment the most important key area is the Namespace planning, without proper planning in this part we end up with more issues in the environment over end user experience and buy certificate with SAN entries which may not be required, there was few misconceptions like we need to add all the CAS and HT servers FQDN in Cert, CASArray Name in cert etc. which are really not required and addressed by Microsoft and other MVPs at various instances in various relevant blog posts. Proper Namespace planning reduces overload on Administrators when they expand the environment and upgrade the same in the upcoming years.

There is a most important article I came across earlier that was published before few years on Exchange 2010 Namespace planning, which covers wide range of information on the topic touches various key areas and would like to take this opportunity to share with you inhere along with the actual EHLO blog post to make you understand the importance of Namespace planning and provide you adequate knowledge on the subject which will be useful for your present and future engagements.

The article which I refer is the one obtained from WindowITPro referred below and it was quite useful for me during my earlier engagements and provided adequate knowledge on the same.

Check here : Exchange Server 2010 Best Practices: Namespace Planning

Finally, refer the latest EHLO Blog post covering some key areas of earlier version of Exchange Server Namespace planning and detailed information on the Exchange Server 2013 Namespace requirement with visual appeal.

Check here: Namespace Planning in Exchange 2013

SAML 2.0 federation with Office 365

Microsoft team continue to innovate more with Office 365 and more Organizations have already adopted Office 365 to their IT Infrastructure and some or on the way and when it comes to Identity and Access management Microsoft is more cautious and bringing more secure way of achieving this and most of the Organization rely on Single Sign-on for which Federation becomes mandate and if the Customer is using Active Directory On premises then this can be achieved easily with ADFS and DirSync, this is not the case with all as there are Organizations who use other Identity providers and even they need to migrate to Office 365 sooner or later and keeping this in mind Microsoft Office team announced the Support for SAML 2.0 federation with Office 365.

The Official Announcement is made in the Office Blog by Paul Andrew Technical Product Manager on the Office 365 team, where we have clear description of how to achieve this federation with the help of LDAP v3 directory synchronization with links to know more on the topic along with deployment guide.

Read the post here : Announcing support for SAML 2.0 federation with Office 365

Office 365 IT Pro Network Yammer Group!

Microsoft team today announced the availability of the new Yammer group for Office 365 IT Pros named "Office 365 IT Pro Network" which is a social network open to all Technical people work on the relevant technology to join hands to discuss over the product, get to know the latest happenings in the Technology, receive support, Suggest innovative ideas and much more.

Microsoft team now concentrates on bringing the O365 Technical community together through this Social Networking group with the power of Yammer which delivers rich Enterprise Social Experience. Its a great news for Technical people who work on the Office 365 platform to have a common ground made available to collaborate more effectively and do more things in the mere future.

Read the official announcement from the Office Blog to know more

Introducing the Office 365 IT Pro Network!

Load Balancing in Exchange 2013 and Managed Availability

Load Balancing becomes critical when we have more workloads approaching the servers from various instances and for this Exchange Server is not an exception, we all know the importance of Load balancing with Exchange Server for all these years and with the Exchange Server 2013 release it moved from the traditional Layer 7 Load Balancer to Layer 4 Load Balancer which requires no session affinity at the Load Balancing layer.

Though this is a great architectural simplification we have a minor glitch with the Managed Availability feature comes along with Exchange Server 2013 which monitors the Exchange server and performs automatic recovery mechanism during failures and a EHLO blog post published today on this topic which clearly explains this impact with various scenarios and also shows how an administrator can configure settings to over come the issues caused by this proactively to have the service up and running without issues.

Ross Smith takes the following Namespace and Affinity scenarios and explains this in detail with clear visual appeal.

Single Namespace / No Session Affinity
Single Namespace / Session Affinity
Multiple Namespaces / No Session Affinity

Check out the blog post to know more: Load Balancing in Exchange 2013 

* In addition to the above post read the below new WindowsITPro article from MVP Michael Van Horenbeeck explaining the clear usage differences between a Layer 4 and Layer 7 load balancing  with Exchange Server 2013 and touches how the usage of a proper load balancer enhances the support experience.

Exchange Server 2013 Load Balancing and Health Checks

Exchange Hybrid Deployment with Exchange Server 2013 SP1 What's New?

Exchange Server 2013 SP1 was released recently and this a major Milestone in Microsoft Exchange Server product line wherein with this release Microsoft Exchange team has done various innovations which typically address few issues and also provides various enhancements to the customers using Exchange both On premises and Online.

 

I have recently written a post on the release of Exchange Server 2013 SP1 during the release date with various references around the community on this topic under a single window along with new issues and fixes which I continue to update till date. Access this post to know more "Exchange Server 2013 SP1 Released!!!"

Microsoft team made significant enhancements with this release which made them provide new features, once you review the information in the above said blog post you will know more on this. Lets get in to our Topic for the day, Everyone know that Microsoft team is insisting customers to move to their Office 365 support who are planning for adopting cloud delivery model and the most recommended method for choosing this option with Exchange is to go for Hybrid Deployment model which provides seamless experience for managing both the On Premises and Cloud and receive benefits from both ends and Microsoft team continue to innovate and bring in new features first with office 365. So, if you are one such customer you will enjoy the benefit first hand and this Hybrid deployment reaches out one step a head wherein you can decide which users to stay On premises and which users to stay in Exchange online based on your Organizations requirements and move them as needed to utilize the service with proper planning and cost which mutually benefits end user experience and Organization's finance budget.

Exchange Server 2013 SP1 benefits more when you have your On premises deployment updated to this release and configured for an Hybrid deployment model with Exchange Online, the vital ones to consider are the below which is really a great significant improvement from Microsoft team and This is a good news for Organizations who are planning to get to migrate to Exchange 2013 then this is the right time.

Hybrid Deployments with Multiple Active Directory Forests is now possible with Exchange Server 2013 SP1 and Organizations using Multiple AD Forests can now migrate to Office 365 and the below TechNet article give you a clear picture on the same with requirements and restrictions to begin.

Check here: Hybrid Deployments with Multiple Active Directory Forests

We can now Configure OAuth Authentication Between Exchange and Exchange Online Organizations which replaces the need of Exchange federation trust configuration process.

Check here for more information:  Configure OAuth Authentication Between Exchange and Exchange Online Organizations

Additionally, Check out the below post from MSExchange.org on configuring OAuth for E-Discovery in an Exchange Hybrid Deployment.

Using OAuth Authentication eDiscovery in an Exchange Hybrid and for Partner Applications written by our MVP Henrik Walther

We can expect more in the upcoming days as things are not the same as it was before with Microsoft Product line.

One more Key factor to note, Microsoft team has officially made announcement that we can expect a new version of Exchange Server only by Next year along with other Product line.

Check out the below Redmond Magazine post to know more.

Next Exchange and SharePoint Server Products Arriving in 2015

Still Using XP...Get ready to Upgrade!!!

Microsoft team has already made announcements to the end users and Organizations who are using Windows XP to upgrade to either Windows 7 or 8 at the earliest as the end is near for the extended support by this 8th April 2014, After this date there will not be any support for XP from Microsoft and this puts XP users under trouble as there is already a great deal of Security threats happening around the world and the exploits target is now this legacy Operating system so its good to start the upgrade now itself as this no better day than today.

I already wrote few posts on this earlier and per current analysis already major Organizations started their upgrade and few are still in progress but we have a tight deadline to complete this and few Organizations are still using XP due to various other reasons and Microsoft Security essentials is available as a backup for providing anti-malware support but this is not a good option for a longer run and everyone need to upgrade the end user Operating system sooner or later. Along with XP , IE8 is also reaching its end of support on the same date so browser upgrade becomes mandate once you complete your OS upgrade to the latest version.

Review my old posts to know how things started.

The End is Near for "Legacies"...

Will You still Continue to use XP after Reading this?

O365 - Upgrade your IE

These are only few and there are many other available outside and everyday one new security threat is happening around the world and all these happenings puts us at the verge to get our environment secure at the earliest by all means.

Microsoft team already started to update users who are using XP by providing warning messages to upgrade their Operating system through the last windows update and also provided us a new free data migration tool called PCmover Express for Windows XP which copies your files and settings from your Windows XP PC to a new device running Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1

Review the below  ZDNet post and Windows Experience Blog for more details,

Microsoft to start nagging Windows XP users about April 8 end-of-support date

New Windows XP data transfer tool and end of support notifications

One more TechNet Blog from Microsoft on the Topic which clearly shows the Impact if you delay the upgrade

Small businesses: Stay safe, get up to date before Windows XP, Office 2003 support ends April 8

Additionally, download this guide to from WindowsITPro know the top reasons to Upgrade from XP.

Download here: Top Reasons to Upgrade from Windows XP Now

Get yourself ready and start the transition if you have not started the upgrade yet as the deadline is getting near day by day.

Additional Bytes...

Exchange Server 2003 is also reaching its end of support by the same date 8th April 2014 and now most of the Organizations using these Servers in their Messaging Environment begin their transition to Exchange Server 2010 and I received more calls and news on the same from my circle and soon will be involving in these transitions again after a long break and for sure will get some new challenges and will write a blog post in the upcoming weeks. Stand by for the same...

Exchange Server 2013 SP1 Released!!!

Today is a significant day where Microsoft Exchange Team released the long awaited Service Pack 1 for Exchange Server 2013, we could call this as CU4 which is next release in series of cumulative updates for Exchange Server, but this one is vital where in it comes with more additional features and add-on unlike regular CUs.

I am not going to write more on this as we already have clear documentation available handy from our Microsoft Exchange Team on the EHLO Blog post published today on this release and also Update Rollup 5 for Exchange 2010 Service Pack 3 and Update Rollup 13 for Exchange 2007 Service Pack 3 released today with some significant fixes and a EHLO blog post available for the same.

Refer the posts below

Released: Exchange Server 2013 Service Pack 1

Released: Update Rollup 5 for Exchange 2010 Service Pack 3 and Update Rollup 13 for Exchange 2007 Service Pack 3

Get Ready to know more on Exchange Server 2013 SP1... 

Microsoft always does the good job in explaining the product or a new update when its either about to launch or post release with both documentation and also through live sessions like Teched, MEC and Ignite Events and with this being said we are going to have our MEC and Teched 2014 coming soon and now for this new Exchange Server 2013 SP1 release we have a upcoming Ignite Webcast session scheduled this week and this would be a great place to join in with Microsoft on the live event to know more on this update in first place post its release with in short period of time with live demo and Q & A between Microsoft product team and Customers like us.

Event is scheduled this Thursday February 27th 2014 9:00 AM - 10.00 AM PST , Get your calendars booked for this event and see you all guys there.

Check out the Event Details here: Future Look at Exchange Server 2013 SP1

*Take a look at the below Garage Series video to know  What’s new in Exchange Server 2013 SP1 and what it means for admins

Access here: What’s new in Exchange Server 2013 SP1 and what it means for admins

Additional bytes,

Along with the Exchange Server updates Microsoft released SP1 for Office,  Office Web Apps Server 2013 and SharePoint 2013.

Microsoft Office Web Apps Server 2013 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Office 2013 Service Pack 1 now available

Microsoft Quietly Releases SP1 for Office 2013, Exchange 2013 and SharePoint 2013

Other Significant posts on the new Exchange Server 2013 SP1

As usual once the Service Pack 1 got released our renowned MVPs started to Test this and updated their blog posts with significant information which throw additional light over the product and a good one to read from various Technical Experts though the content is same you will have a different experience once you go through all.

Check out these...

Outlook Connectivity with MAPI over HTTP - EHLO Blog post

Ask The Perf Guy: Sizing Guidance Updates For Exchange 2013 SP1 - EHLO Blog post

Data loss prevention in Exchange just got better - EHLO Blog post 

Exchange 2013 SP1 Released - Rhoderick Milne MSFT

Exchange Server 2013 SP1: What's New - Paul Robichaux

Exchange 2013 SP1 - mixture of new and completed fixtures - Tony Redmond

Exchange Server 2013 Transitions from RPC to HTTP - Tony Redmond

Exchange 2013 SP1 introduces simplified DAGs - Tony Redmond  

Exchange Server 2013 Data Loss Prevention - Tony Redmond 

EMS command logging reappears in Exchange 2013 SP1 - Tony Redmond

Exchange's interesting document fingerprinting feature - Tony Redmond

Loose Truncation in Exchange Server 2013 SP1 - Tony Redmond


What’s new in Exchange Server 2013 SP1 (CU4)? - Michael Van Horenbeeck

Exchange 2013 SP1 features that will make admins happy - Michael Van Horenbeeck

Windows Server 2012 R2 and Database Availability Groups - Scott Schnoll

Exchange 2013 Service Pack 1 - Jaapwesselius

MapiHttp in Exchange 2013 SP1 - Jaapwesselius 

Exchange 2013 SP1 SSL Offloading - Jaapwesselius

Load Balancing in Exchange 2013 SP1 with F5 - Jaapwesselius

Exchange 2013 SP1 is out! And now? - Dave Stork 

Upgrading Exchange Server 2013 Servers to Service Pack 1 - Paul Cunnigham

Microsoft Supporting S/MIME Security for Exchange Server, Outlook and Office 365 - Redmond Magazine 

What you need to know about Exchange 2013 SP1 - InfoWorld

S/MIME encryption now in Office 365 - Office Blogs

Exchange 2013 SP1 – Way to go Windows 2012 R2 -  MVP Blog

Also take a look at this below post 

PowerShell command logging in Exchange 2013 SP1 view - Jetze's Blog ( Translate this Blog to English)

* New issues identified 

External Mail Flow Not Working After Exchange Server 2013 SP1 Upgrade - Paul Cunnigham

Inbound e-mail not accepted after applying Exchange 2013 SP1 - Michael De Rooij

Exchange Server 2013 Transport Services Won’t Start After Service Pack 1 Upgrade - Paul Cunnigham

Exchange 2013 SP1 Transport Agent Fix - Michael De Rooij 

Exchange 2013 SP1 suffers late-breaking bug that affects third-party products - Tony Redmond

MS KB for the above said Transport Agent Fix.

Third-party transport agents cannot be loaded correctly in Exchange Server 2013   

* One more new issue with Exchange 2013 SP1 affecting Transport Service

The front-end Microsoft Exchange Transport service stops and does not restart after you upgrade to Exchange Server 2013 SP1

Other vital issues and fixes.

Informed of Undocumented Fix in Exchange 2013 SP1 - SMTP 4 IT 

Outlook 2013 SP1 fails to connect to Exchange in a multi-forest environment

*List of issues Exchange Server 2013 SP1 fixes 

Description of Exchange Server 2013 Service Pack 1

*Upgrading via Cmd-line.

 How to upgrade to Exchange Server 2013 Service Pack 1 using command-line


Post this release of SP1, Exchange Server Supportability Matrix and Release notes is updated.

Exchange Server Supportability Matrix

Release Notes for Exchange 2013

Final Thoughts...

Since Exchange Server 2013 SP1 is released now, soon Microsoft will begin their first upgrade in the Office 365 Environment to roll-out the new features and for sure this will definitely benefit the Exchange Online customers and  at the same time, they will be the one who will face new issues at first sight as this is inevitable when we roll-out changes to large environments and O365 stays on the top without exceptions. Will update this post soon as I saw any significant changes occur in my O365 Hybrid environment and also watch-out for more information available outside in the Technical Community Online to stay up-to date.

Stay Tuned....

Lync Server 2013 On-Premises Architectures Poster

Today Microsoft Team released a new Lync Server 2013 On-Premises Architecture poster and this is a quite significant one to have handy to know more on how an On-Premises Architecture can be designed and what are new changes made to Lync 2013 along with the new features introduced and it is a one stop resource that will provide a strong understanding of Lync Server 2013.

Download here : Lync Server 2013 On-Premises Architectures Poster

I Also referenced this posted under the Poster section, you can download the related posters to know more visually.

Office Web Apps now becomes Office Online

This is the hot topic in Microsoft today where in now the new Office Web Apps which was introduced as a part of Wave 15 product line via the new version of Office 2013 which makes users to access office applications online and all you need is a Microsoft account and  if you used SkyDrive to store and your access documents and presentations then you are already familiar with it. Also change is inevitable with Microsoft nowadays as SkyDrive became OneDrive yesterday and now Office Web Apps becomes Office Online.
 

Microsoft has made the Official Announcement in the Office blog with more details and also our Rod Trent from WindowsITPro wrote a blog post which is an add-on to know more on this topic.

Official Blog : Introducing Office Online at Office.com

WindowsITPro: Office Web Apps Become Office Online

Hierarchical Address Book now available in Office 365

Hierarchical Address Book now available in Office 365 earlier it was made available only with Exchange 2013 On premises and now it is available with Office 365 and the configuration remains the same which is outlined in the EHLO blog post below with clear details. Also for Hybrid deployment Microsoft is working towards a solution so that On premise and Cloud user can both utilize the HAB feature seamlessly.

Refer the post here : Hierarchical Address Book now available in Office 365 too

Additionally, Read the below post from MVP Tony Redmond on his views over HABs

Office 365 message encryption and HABs

Exchange On-Premises TAP Program

Today Microsoft team updated about their new Exchange On-Premises Technology Adoption Program (TAP)  via the EHLO Blog post and now nominations are open for customers who are using Exchange Server On premises to join hands with Microsoft in improvising Exchange Server product line by testing the new updates and releases in the Lab environment and implement in production and share the feedback and suggestions directly with Microsoft product team which will eventually benefit them to build the product even more robust than now and typically assists customers to know and feel the latest releases and identify the pain points and resolve them on time with dedicated support from Microsoft and get things moved towards the future.

This is a great innovation from Microsoft where in now we ourselves can test the product and identify the potential impact and notify Microsoft on time to get things fixed and also provide the required enhancements to be made to product which will be evaluated and made available with the next release and benefit both the product vendor Microsoft  and we as a customer.

You can review and nominate your Organization if you are ready to face the new challenges and decide the future.

Read the official blog post below to know more : Exchange On-Premises TAP Program accepting nominations

Lync Server 2013 Stress Testing Guide

When it comes to Exchange or Lync Server Design and Deployment the major concentration is required over the Capacity planning and a proper Capacity planning based up on the current Environment analysis and also keeping the future enhancements and requirements in mind brings up a strong solution for a successful design and implementation of the Environment.

Admins who are very much familiar with Exchange Design and deployment knows about the Exchange Server Role requirement Calculator and the Jetstress tool which are the most common ones used, And when it comes to Lync we still have similar options available as with Exchange and they are the Lync Server 2013 Capacity Planning Calculator and the Lync Server 2013 Stress and Performance Tool

I wrote this post here to update you about the above said Tools available for Lync similar to Exchange and point you to the new Lync Server 2013 Stress Testing Guide released by Microsoft to know more on Lync Server 2013 Stress Testing and how to perform proper it properly in align with your requirement and plan for a successful production design and deployment.

Download here: Lync Server 2013 Stress Testing Guide