Do you manage the exciting Microsoft Teams collaboration workspace? Are you tired of the thin content of virtual conferences? Do you miss the in-person collaboration and relationship-building that only an in-person conference can bring? Then you should come to Comms vNext Reconnect on October 25-26, 2021 in Denver, CO!
Comms vNext is an independent, Community-led event, created and fashioned with the Community in mind.
Here, you will meet with leaders in the Microsoft Teams community to learn best practices and how to be successful in your engagements. This in-person event will be held at the Renaissance Denver Central Park Hotel in Denver, Colorado, with special pricing for Comms vNext attendees.
I'm very pleased to announce that I have been awarded the Microsoft MVP Award again for 2020-2021 in the Office Apps & Services category! This is my 12th consecutive year to receive this award and it humbles me to work alongside such talented people.
The MVP Award is an important recognition to me and I'm honored to receive it. It includes several benefits, but the most important one to me are all the interactions with the great product groups at Microsoft. These relationships allow me to reach out to specific product team members to provide feedback and get clarification on product features and behaviors.
It's a mutually beneficial partnership -- under NDA, Microsoft is able to talk with MVPs about product futures, provide access to technology adoption programs (TAPs) to test new software, and solicit our MVP feedback. As MVPs, we are able to provide important and honest feedback to the product teams about how new features and behaviors will affect our customers, beta test new software and file bug reports, and be advocates for you, the customer.
I had a GREAT time at Microsoft Ignite 2019 in Orlando! I hope you were able to attend or at least catch some of the online sessions that were streamed in real-time.
One of the big highlights for me this week was attending the ENow VIP dinner where I sat between Greg Taylor (Exchange Marketing Lead extraordinaire) and Jeffrey Snover (the father of PowerShell).
I'm pleased to be speaking at Microsoft Ignite in Orlando next week. This will be a fabulous conference with lots of fantastic content!
BRK3145: IT burnout - the state of the industry panel (45 minute breakout)
Have you been working non-stop and never taking a break? Do you go on vacation, but still find yourself working? Does your leadership expect you to be available all the time even when you are not on-call? Do you go home, answering email in between all of the family things going on that evening? Are you truly present in all the things you do?
Recently, our team conducted a survey about IT burnout to get a real sense of how IT professionals are functioning and managing their personal well-being. We learned some interesting things that will surprise you, and have some statistics you won't want to miss. Join me and a panel of MVPs to have a discussion on this tough topic.
Session ID: 78641
When: OCCC W224 F-H
Where: Tuesday 10:15-11:00am
THR3033: Reading SMTP headers like a boss (20 minute theater session)
Learn how to read SMTP headers for fun and profit! In this demo-tastic session, learn how to read SMTP headers to troubleshoot mail flow, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Also, see some of the online tools available to analyze headers and turn you into an SMTP rock star.
Session ID: 78655
When: Thursday 11:30-11:50am
Where: The Hub - Theater 9
THR3034: Twenty minutes to a secure environment (20 minute theater session)
Legacy authentication is an attacker's best friend. Learn how to secure your environment using modern authentication in the cloud and hybrid modern authentication for on-premises. Then, learn how to turn off legacy authentication in your Microsoft 365 and Exchange 2019 environments to keep the bad guys out!
Session ID: 78663
When: Friday 12:05-12:25pm
Where: The Hub - Theater 9
In addition to my sessions you'll find me at the Exchange booth on the expo floor and at various Exchange and identity sessions throughout the week. I hope you'll come to these great sessions and say hi!
Once again I am deeply honored to receive the Microsoft MVP Award in the Office Servers and Apps category for 2019-2020. This is my eleventh consecutive year for this award.
The MVP Award is an important recognition to me and I'm very pleased to receive it. It includes several benefits, but the most important one to me are all the interactions with the great product groups at Microsoft. These relationships allow me to reach out to specific product team members to provide feedback and get clarification on product features and behaviors.
It's a mutually beneficial partnership -- under NDA, Microsoft is able to talk with MVPs about product futures, provide access to technology adoption programs (TAPs) to try out new software, and solicit our feedback. As MVPs, we are able to provide important and honest feedback to the product teams about how new features and behaviors will affect our customers, beta test new software and file bug reports, and be advocates for you, the customer.
This also adds value to my IT consulting business, EXPTA Consulting. It's evidence that Microsoft values my technical leadership and real-world experience, which I bring to each and every engagement, and customers know that I provide the best results as their trusted advisor.
For those of you who were fortunate enough to attend the MEC conferences, you understand what it's like to be a part of a wonderful blend of community and awesome technical content.
If you work with Teams or Skype for Business that experience is happening again with the Comms vNext conference in Denver, CO June 5-6th 2019.
This two-day conference promises to be a spectacular event with 36 sessions devoted to Teams and Skype for Business. Sessions will cover voice and voicemail, end-user adoption, development and much more. And all sessions will be led by the superheroes of the industry including 9 Microsoft product group members, 18 MVPs and MCMs from around the world. The keynote will be held on Wednesday, June 5th, by Heidi Gloudemans.
In my view, the most valuable part of a conference like this is the opportunity to develop business relationships with the speakers and attendees. Folks who work with these technologies every day, just like you. With a limit of only 300 attendees, this conference promises to bring everyone together in a way that can't be matched in other huge conferences.
The cost of this two-day event is only $299 for both days and access to all sessions. Even better, you can get a hotel-included package for $525, which includes a two-night stay at the Denver Renaissance Stapleton where the conference will be held. Register today before this conference sells out!
I'm pleased to announce the 11th Annual UC Roundtable at Microsoft Ignite 2018 in Orlando!
A one-of-a-kind conference deserves a one-of-a-kind opportunity to network with your peers.
The purpose of the UC Roundtable is to gather Exchange, Office 365, and Skype for Business/Teams admins, MCMs, MVPs, Exchange product group members, architects, and experts for a free-flowing discussion about issues, questions, and experiences related to collaboration. If you work with these technologies you need to be here!
The UC Roundtable is going old school again this year! This will be a no-host event. Order your own beer or a bite to eat before you leave for the evening's parties. Please RSVP to jguillet@expta.comso I can tell them how many people to expect.
Help spread the word on Twitter and I hope to see you there!
From time-to-time Microsoft reorganizes the MVP Award Program to better align it with their business goals. This year is no different. Today, Microsoft announced that the Office Servers and Services MVP Group, my previous award category, is being renamed to Office Apps & Services. With this change they are moving OneDrive, Microsoft Stream, and Project into this category.
The Office Apps & Services category now contains over 582 MVPs awarded across 16 contribution areas.
With these enhancements to the MVP Award, MVPs and Microsoft are in an even better position to help people and companies around the world make the most of their technologies. If you think someone you know should be a Microsoft MVP you can nominate them to become an MVP member!
I'm very pleased to announce that I have been given the Office Servers and Services Microsoft MVP Award again for 2018-2019. I have been awarded every year since 2009, so this will be my 10th consecutive year.
The MVP Award is an important recognition to me and I'm honored to receive it. It includes several benefits, but the most important one to me are all the interactions with the great product groups at Microsoft. These relationships allow me to reach out to specific product team members to provide feedback and get clarification on product features and behaviors.
It's a mutually beneficial partnership -- under NDA, Microsoft is able to talk with MVPs about product futures, provide access to technology adoption programs (TAPs) to test new software, and solicit our MVP feedback. As MVPs, we are able to provide important and honest feedback to the product teams about how new features and behaviors will affect our customers, beta test new software and file bug reports, and be advocates for you, the customer.
This has been somewhat of a nerve-racking award cycle. As Microsoft truly morphs into a cloud services company, its priorities are changing faster than ever before. Longtime MVPs have been notified that they were not going to be awarded this year because their community events do not align with Microsoft's vision. Entire groups that focus on on-premises technologies have been cut from the MVP program. I understand why, but I am sorry to see them go.
Another program change is that the re-award cycle changed from quarterly to yearly. I used be awarded on April 1 every year (I always worried that my award email was an April Fool's joke), but now all MVPs are awarded the same date, July 1. That means that the MVP leads have to review hundreds or thousands of MVPs at the same time. That takes a lot of work by them and I appreciate it.
If you think that you or someone you know deserves to be an MVP, you can learn what it takes to be an one and nominate them from the Microsoft MVP Site. Microsoft reviews and awards new MVPs every month, with a renewal cycle on July 1.
The MVP Award adds value to my IT consulting business, EXPTA Consulting. It's evidence that Microsoft values my leadership in the community and real-world experience, which I bring to each and every engagement. Customers know that I provide the best results as their trusted advisor.
On Monday, March 19, I'll be at the "Ask The Experts Networking Hour" at 5:45PM PDT. This will be an opportunity for attendees to interact and learn from industry peers and representatives from Microsoft.
Then on Tuesday, March 20th, I'll be presenting, "Running Exchange hybrid over the long term" at 10:45AM PDT.
When you connect on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server to Exchange Online through a hybrid environment, are you creating a short-lived bridge to migrate to the cloud? Or will this hybrid live on indefinitely, waiting for internal and external policy to support a cloud-only reality? Either way, make sure you catch this session to learn best practices of running a hybrid Exchange environment. Topics addressed include: maintaining hybrid across patching cycles and upgrades; accommodating changes to network models; adapting during acquisitions and mergers; and more.
While I'm there, you can reach out to me to see how EXPTA Consulting can help you with your IT projects. Please join me and I look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!
I'm pleased to announce the 10th Annual UC Roundtable at Microsoft Ignite 2017 in Orlando!
A one-of-a-kind conference deserves a one-of-a-kind opportunity to network with your peers.
The purpose of the UC Roundtable is to gather Exchange, Office 365, and Skype for Business admins, MCMs, MVPs, Exchange product group members, architects, and experts for a free-flowing discussion about issues, questions, and experiences related to Exchange, Office 365, and Skype for Business. If you work with these technologies you need to be here!
Wednesday, September 27th from 6:00PM to 7:30PM EDT
The UC Roundtable is going old school this year! This will be a no-host event. Order your own beer or a bite to eat before you leave for the evening's parties. Please RSVP to jguillet@expta.comso I can tell them how many people to expect.
It's less than one week to Microsoft Ignite in Orlando, FL. I hope you’re as excited as I am to attend and hear about all the new hotness that Microsoft plans to deliver. I’ll be speaking Wednesday 12:30-1:45PM at "The Epic Exchange Preferred Architecture Debate" with a panel of experts. I hope to see your there! I’ll also be available throughout the conference for meetings to discuss how I can help you with your current and future IT projects.
On-Prem Solutions – Including Exchange and Active Directory health checks, mitigation, and upgrades. We recognize that not all customers can or want to go to the cloud. Let me help you upgrade and make the most of your on-premises solutions, based on my many years’ of experience and best practices. I provide turnkey solutions or I can work with your IT staff and provide training and support.
Office 365 Solutions – Let EXPTA Consulting help you get the most from Office 365. We can help with data migrations, tenant to tenant migrations, EM+S, interoperability and integration solutions.
Identity Design and Solutions – Safe, secure, and easy to use Identity management solutions are the key to a successful deployment. I can help design and implement the best identity solutions to meet your organization’s needs.
Recent EXPTA Consulting customers include an international college Office 365 migration, a large Federal agency identity project, a mid-sized business insurance brokerage Exchange 2016 upgrade, private equity firms, and consulting/hosting providers. Set up a meeting to see how we can help you!
Here, we plan to talk about what is the best, DAS or SAN? Are SSDs on the way in or are slow spindles here to stay? Should you give up and migrate to the cloud? What about virtualization?
Come listen to experts from inside and outside of Microsoft debate the various Exchange architectures that can be deployed on-premises and hybrid.
This is an open panel discussion where you can ask questions and learn about architectures and topologies that defy the preferred architecture, such as some of those listed in the Exchange Solution Reviewed Program (ESRP). We'll discuss the ESRP and it's role in Exchange architecture design.
"We've assembled an amazing set of Exchange MVP luminaries, representing scores of years of experience, to share their unvarnished truth about all things Exchange. You won't want to miss your chance to ask questions and hear this panel's expert opinions. Hiring this set of experts for 75 minutes would cost you a fortune, but by attending this session, you'll only pay the small fee of having to listen to them occasionally poke fun at Microsoft - and each other."
I'm pleased to announce that I have been given the Office Servers and Services Microsoft MVP award again for 2017-2018. I have been awarded every year since 2009, so this will be my ninth consecutive year.
The MVP Award is an important recognition to me and I'm very pleased to receive it. It includes several benefits, but the most important one to me are all the interactions with the great product groups at Microsoft. These relationships allow me to reach out to specific product team members to provide feedback and get clarification on product features and behaviors.
It's a mutually beneficial partnership -- under NDA, Microsoft is able to talk with MVPs about product futures, provide access to technology adoption programs (TAPs) to try out new software, and solicit our feedback. As MVPs, we are able to provide important and honest feedback to the product teams about how new features and behaviors will affect our customers, beta test new software and file bug reports, and be advocates for you, the customer.
This also adds value to my IT consulting business, EXPTA Consulting. It's evidence that Microsoft values my technical leadership and real-world experience, which I bring to each and every engagement, and customers know that I provide the best results as their trusted advisor.
I'm super excited to announce that I've started a new IT consulting practice, EXPTA Consulting, LLC.
With over 30 years' of experience and the highest certifications in the IT industry, count on EXPTA Consulting as your trusted advisor. We specialize in on-premises Exchange Server, Skype for Business, Office 365, and hybrid solutions that solve your business challenges.
We know that a lot of organizations can't or won't go to the cloud for many reasons. We offer expert professional services to keep your on-premises Exchange and Skype for Business infrastructure in top running condition, perform upgrades, and deliver innovative solutions for coexistence with other line-of-business applications. We provide greenfield deployments, as well as hybrid and migration services.
Exchange Server and Skype for Business Server deployments, upgrades, and migration services
Health checks and remediation
Configuration and troubleshooting
Unified Communications
Active Directory health checks and remediation
Public key infrastructure (PKI)
Skype for Business hybrid services with Exchange Online
Enterprise Voice implementation and configuration
Legacy PBX integration
Session Boarder Controller and gateway configuration
I'm pleased to announce the 9th Annual UC Roundtable at Microsoft Ignite 2016 in Atlanta!
A one of a kind conference deserves a one of a kind opportunity to network with your peers.
The purpose of the UC Roundtable is to gather Exchange, Office 365, and Skype for Business admins, MCMs, MVPs, Exchange product group members, architects, and experts for a free-flowing discussion about issues, questions, and experiences related to Exchange, Office 365, and Skype for Business. If you work with Exchange, Office 365, or Skype for Business or Lync Server you need to be here!
Wednesday, September 28th from 7:30PM to 11:00PM EDT
A big special thank you to my friends at F5who will be hosting the event for the fifth year in a row! Those of you who have attended previous UC Rountables know that they put on a great event.
Please RSVP to jeff@expta.comfor event details and location. I will email you the details via EventBrite.
Help spread the word on Twitter and I hope you can join me!
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Also, I'm pleased to say that I will be presenting two sessions at Microsoft Ignite this year:
We will take questions from the audience and give advice from the voice of independent experience. I hope you can join me for these sessions. Check out the MyIgnite tool and schedule builder at myignite.microsoft.com.
I'm pleased to have been the technical editor of the new eBook, Exchange Server Troubleshooting Companion. It's always enjoyable to work on a strong publication that I can stand behind.
The Exchange Server Troubleshooting Companion does much more than just give specific guidance about solving a particular problem. Any Bing or Google search can do that. This book teaches you the methodology and mindset required to troubleshoot any Exchange problem. It helps you understand the underpinnings of how Exchange works so that you can diagnose a problem quickly and accurately.
The author team includes fellow Exchange Server* MVPs, Paul Cunningham and Andrew Higginbotham. Between them, they have over 29 years of experience deploying, managing, and troubleshooting Exchange Server. You can read more about Andrew's take on the book on Reddit.
Veteran Exchange Server MVP Tony Redmond is the overall editor for the book, This keeps Tony busy with this project, as well as co-authoring Office 365 for IT Professionals. That's a good thing. We don't want Tony having too much time on his hands. ;)
I highly recommend both of these eBooks for your Exchange and Office 365 library. Both books are available in EPUB and Amazon Kindle formats. Please go to the exchangeserverpro website for ordering information.
* Late last year the Exchange Server MVP category has been rolled up into the Office Servers and Services MVP group to align more closely with Microsoft's cloud-first vision.
I m pleased to announce that I have been given the Microsoft MVP award again for 2016. I have been awarded every year since 2009, so this will be my eighth consecutive year.
About mid 2015 Microsoft revamped the MVP Award program and rearranged the specialties. All Exchange Server MVPs were moved to the Office Servers and Services technical communities to better align with Microsoft's cloud-first offerings. That makes sense, since I work with so many more technologies than Exchange, both on-prem and in the cloud.
I'm honored to have be awarded the award for "Best at Knowledge Sharing" earlier this month at the 2015 MVP Global Summit in Redmond, WA.
Netmail and Binary Tree generously sponsored the second Exchange Oscars party at the Tavern Hall in Bellevue, WA. This was a really fun event where the Exchange product group and Exchange MVPs got together for food, drinks and awards.
The Exchange MVPs voted to give awards to the following Exchange product group members:
Most Helpful Product Group Member - Brian Day
Best Advice Given - Timothy Heeney
Best Tool - The Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer (ExRCA) - Brad Hughes and Shawn McGrath
Best EHLO Blog Post - Ross Smith IV
The Exchange product group also voted to give awards to the following Exchange MVPs:
This self-published eBook is the most comprehensive publication available of all things Office 365. Over 150 pages of new content has been added since the first release at Microsoft Ignite in May 2015. The book covers new features and capabilities of Microsoft's cloud offering from an Exchange professional's perspective. You will learn how to take advantage of all the cloud has to offer in this comprehensive but surprisingly easy to read book.
The MVP co-authors are Tony Redmond, Michael Van Horenbeeck, and Paul Cunningham. Once again I provide my services as technical editor for this 770+ page book. Together, we bring over 60 years' experience in the IT and messaging industry. We have spent many hours exploring and understanding, participating in technical preview programs, and developing best practices in order to update this second edition with brand new content.
You can preorder Office 365 for Exchange Professionals from Paul Cunningham's ExchangeServerPro.com website or for your Kindle on Amazon.
If you are attending the IT/Dev Connections conference please join us for our second edition book launch party hosted by Binary Tree.
