Office 365: The End of Exchange?

My scared cat / gatto (Photo credit: Paolo Margari)

"Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid!"

That's what I tell messaging engineers and consultants that aren't building their cloud skills.  The days of vanilla on-premises e-mail systems are numbered, and if you're not building your skills you're falling behind.

Just in case you've been asleep for the last twenty years here's what has happened in e-mail:

1. Starting in the early 90's - only a few people had e-mail, mostly through universities.
2. By the mid-late 90's - dial-up internet providers started providing IMAP / POP3 e-mail services that you would access through client applications like Eudora or Outlook.  At this point, e-mail was mostly used by businesses.
3. In the late 90's - ISPs, Yahoo and AOL began providing access to e-mail for customers through rudimentary e-mail web portals.  E-mail became popular with more tech savvy home users.
4. By 2007, Web 2.0 was a reality and Google had released Gmail.  They began wrapping more powerful web functionality around the service.  The accessibility provided by a friendly and easy web interface further popularized e-mail... most people had e-mail accounts by 2007.
5. In 2009, after seeing Google successfully launch a hosted e-mail product, Microsoft released Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS).  It was essentially Exchange 2007 hosted on some servers Microsoft owned.  The value proposition of BPOS being designed for business was pitched to customers.
6. In late 2011, after upgrading Exchange to 2010 and re-writing the software to better tailor it for mass hosting, Microsoft upgraded BPOS to Office 365 and began including rudimentary Office apps hosted in the cloud as well.
7. In January of 2013 Microsoft upgrades Office 365 again and the Microsoft Office suite took a full leap in to the cloud, providing much enhanced functionality:
1. After aggressively pursuing certifications and jumping the toughest regulatory and compliance hurdles, Office 365 began accelerating adoption both in business and in people's personal lives.
2. Offering the full Microsoft Office software suite further distinguished Office 365 from competitors.
3. The only hosted e-mail service with a true hybrid deployment model, Office 365 now defines the hosted e-mail experience for large enterprises.

So, its plain to see that cloud-based e-mail services are only going to expand.  The demand for hybrid deployments that include both on-premises and cloud-based systems is increasing as customers realize that they can move the workloads they are comfortable with putting in to the cloud while leaving others on-premises in traditional hosted systems.  If you're an Exchange e-mail administrator and you're not preparing for hybrid and cloud-based systems you're in trouble.

The cost / benefit equation is an easy sell to IT executives and vendors like Microsoft are making that value proposition to your leadership daily.  You can only use excuses for not moving for so long before the cost savings drive some of your e-mail in to the cloud.  You'd best be ready for it soon or you'll be looking at a new career when you cannot adapt.

Commodore 64 (Photo credit: shaniber)

Speaking of excuses, lets talk about companies that aren't investigating how cloud can enhance their business.  Want to be like Polaroid or Kodak?  They failed to see the digital camera revolution.  How about Palm Pilot and Commodore?  When was the last time you saw one of either of those?

In my research for this article I came across a great list of excuses to NOT innovate.  I'm going to quote just a few excuses from Mitch Ditkoff's article "The Top 100 Lamest Excuses for Not Innovating".  I suggest you give the full article a read... its hits very close to the mark I believe.  Here are a few of the excuses he found:

5. We won't be able to get it past legal.
6. I've got too much on my plate.
13. There's too much bureaucracy here to get anything done.
14. Our customers aren't asking for it.
15. We're a risk averse culture. Always will be.
34. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
89. We need to focus on the short term for a while.
91. What we really need are some cost cutting initiatives.
95. Maybe next year.

Do any of those sound familiar?  If your organization is using any of those excuses to not go to the cloud or at least evaluate how portions of cloud could be implemented, you should be looking for a new job.  If your employer doesn't use cloud you aren't developing cloud skills.  If you're not developing those cloud skills how will you find your next job?  Employers are asking for cloud skills on top of everything else.  Just go look at the LinkedIn (14,590 postings with "cloud") or SimplyHired (5,484 "cloud" jobs just near Kansas City) job boards and search for "cloud."  You'll see.

And if you are that company using compliance and regulations to not move to the cloud... you know who you are.  Are you using excuses like being in a highly regulated industry like healthcare, financial services, power & utilities?  Check out "Office 365: A snowball's chance in hell?" for a look at how some top utilities are taking a second look at the cloud.

If you are hiding behind these acronyms you need to take another look at cloud.  At least with Office 365 (see the Office 365 Trust Center) I know you have good, compliant, hybrid solutions:

• ISO
• HIPAA
• ISO
• FISMA
• FERC / NERC,
• EU privacy

In a future article maybe I'll talk about how hybrid solutions can meet the needs of highly regulated industries.  Yes, it IS possible to comply with regulations and just move certain workloads to the cloud.

Are you ready for the cloud?  Time's up.  It's here.

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Modern Office Communications Infographic

This infographic was just released by Microsoft during the Microsoft Exchange Conference.

A study of 450 IT pros culminated in this look into the industry. Results show IT pros demand better compliance and security for growing companies that are using more and more mobile devices that are being attacked using increasingly sophisticated methods.

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Companies, IT Departments and Workers Need to Get in to the Cloud





cloud computing (Photo credit: kei51)

The cloud is here and businesses that don't change to incorporate it in private, public or some sort of hybrid are in trouble.  They'll be at a terrible disadvantage going forward as their competitors engage resources in the cloud that are unavailable on-premises.

For instance, if your company uses Microsoft software pay attention...  Microsoft originally built their software for on-premises deployment.  The whole suite of Microsoft Office server were local-only apps.  They recently changed to a hybrid software development approach and now many of those apps are being purpose developed specifically as cloud services.  Primary development for Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, and the Service Center apps just to name a few are in the cloud.  You'll see features appear there before they appear in the periodic major point releases for on-premises installation.

This means that those businesses that are "in the cloud" will have access to features and capabilities well ahead of those that are not.  It also means that IT workers that only work with on-premises software are going to be woefully unprepared to support the new cloud-based versions.  They simply won't have access to the new software and won't know it.

So, what should companies do?  Get cloud help!  That may mean supplementing their own staff with cloud architects or subcontracting to consultants.  Their existing IT staff simply won't suffice without additional training, however.  Often, existing staff is already taxed and the prospect of coming up to speed on a whole new platform (which it is, by the way) and converting existing business processes is outside of their availability and capability both.

There's a reason why cloud consultants and consulting companies are in such high demand right now.  Similarly to how users demanded smartphones and tablets, executives and users are demanding the capabilities of cloud computing now.  They'll try it in small ways like e-mail and instant messaging and cloud services will eventually penetrate organizations from the top down and bottom up.  IT departments that have not prepared and IT workers that are untrained will be caught in the middle, being asked to do something they have no experience with.  At that point their choices are to outsource, train up, or fall behind.

Cloud services do indeed represent a sea change in IT services.  However, cloud is no panacea.  Most services are still better handled in house, but the list is continually shrinking.  I was once a Microsoft Exchange consultant... a fairly highly sought after skill.  I certainly wouldn't consider that my most marketable skill any more, though.  E-mail consultants without cloud skills are like cars with engines that need leaded gasoline or Betamax tapes... they've had their time and now its time to enter the 21st century.

Many other disciplines are experiencing similar changes.  Developers and infrastructure workers alike will need to update skills if they have not already.  Companies are demanding they do so and going in to denial won't save your job when your company decides to outsource e-mail management or web development.  It's better to be part of the change and help direct how cloud services are implemented than to have them forced on you.

So, get in to the cloud or get left behind, change waits for noone.

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