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Introduction to Microsoft Exchange Server 2016
By incorporating Client Access services (CAS) into the Mailbox server role, Exchange 2016 continues Exchange Server 2013's architectural consolidation for easier deployment and expansion, more efficient use of hardware resources, and simplified management. All of this reduces total cost of ownership for Exchange 2016. In addition to the headline feature of an all-in-one server, Exchange Server 2016 offers tighter integration with Microsoft 365 apps, support for Windows Server 2016, higher I/O performance, enhanced data loss protection (DLP) and recoverability, improved support for smart phones and tablets, and a more fully featured Outlook web client.

With Exchange 2003 at end of life and Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 becoming legacy email platforms, businesses have good reason to consider upgrading to Exchange 2016. Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can help you assess the business benefits and costs of migrating to Exchange Server 2016; determine whether a local, cloud-based, or hybrid data center environment makes the most sense for your situation; design and document a deployment plan that makes optimal use of your existing resources; and execute a migration from your current Exchange solution to a messaging ecosystem based on Exchange 2016.

Progent can help you in any and all phases of your migration to Exchange 2016 including planning high availability system topology; server and CAL licensing compliance for Exchange 2016 Server; configuring CAS services; designing and deploying Windows Hyper-V virtualization; specifying storage requirements for your virtual machines (VMs), databases and logs; configuring hardware load balancing (HLB) for high-availability; building, configuring and testing Exchange Servers, Windows Servers and high availability (HA) DAG groups; and performing client remediation with Office 2010 SP2 or greater or with Microsoft 365. Progent's Exchange consultants offer as-needed online or on-site expertise to resolve specific problems confronting your IT staff or Progent can provide comprehensive project management services for migrating to Exchange 2016. For more details about Progent's migration support services for Exchange 2016, see Exchange 2016 Migration Consulting.

New Architecture
Exchange Server 2016's architecture has been compacted to a single building block, the Mailbox server, that contains transport services, mailbox databases, client access services, and Unified Messaging (UM) services. By consolidating these former server roles into services within the Mailbox server role, Exchange 2016 simplifies migration, deployment, expansion, management, and fault isolation. The optional second server role, the Edge Transport Server, includes filtering agents not available with the Mailbox server and can be deployed in your perimeter network to manage Internet-facing mail flow and bolster message protection and defense against spam and viruses.

Exchange 2016 Mailbox and Edge Transport servers and management tools require Standard or Datacenter versions of Windows Server 2012 R2 or later. To manage these servers from a Windows client requires the 64-bit versions of Windows 8.1, Windows 10, or later. Progent can provide expert online or onsite Windows Server 2012 R2 consulting, Windows 11 migration planning, Windows 10 integration, and Windows 8.1 support.

Client Enhancements in Exchange Server 2016
Exchange 2016 continues the tradition of renaming the web client. The older Outlook Web App (OWA) is now known as Outlook on the web and has a revamped look, better performance, enhanced cross-platform support, and a variety of new and improved features. Browsers supported by the new Outlook on the web include Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer 11, and the latest releases of Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Improvements include:

• Interface updates that take advantage of specific features of iPhones and Android phones
• Support for emojis
• The ability to propose a new time for meeting invitations
• The ability to add contacts from a LinkedIn account
• Email reminders for Calendar events, improved Calendar search, and birthday calendars
• An optional single-line reading pane for optimizing screen utilization
• Expanded filtering including data ranges and related senders
• Over a dozen new graphic themes
• Rich previews of the destinations of links pasted into messages with support for video links
• Pins to keep tagged email at the top of the Inbox
• Flags to mark items for follow-up, and the ability to find flagged items with Inbox filters or via the new Task module
• A new action pane shows common actions including the new functions Archive, Sweep, and Undo

As an alternative to file attachments, documents stored in OneDrive for Business in an on-premises SharePoint Server can be linked to and shared by Outlook users they same way as with Microsoft 365. Outlook users can also save or upload a file to OneDrive or see online as well as local files on Most Recently Used lists.

Enhanced Message Policy and Compliance Features
Exchange 2016 offers important improvements in the areas of message policy and compliance including enhanced data loss prevention, in-place archiving, retention and eDiscovery.

Data loss prevention (DLP) policy and transport rules in Exchange 2016 provide improved protection against the unauthorized or accidental disclosure of 80 kinds of sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) by incorporating several new conditions and actions. Examples of PII that can be detected by its character pattern include credit card numbers, social security numbers, bank account and ABA routing numbers, and driver's license numbers.

• The condition Any attachment has these properties, including any of these words allows an Exchange transport rule to match specified words contained in an Office document attached to a message. This new condition allows you to integrate Exchange DLP policies with SharePoint Server and Windows Server 2012 R2 File Classification Infrastructure for an all-inclusive DLP solution.
• The new action Notify the recipient with a message allows a transport rule to send the recipient a notice with the text which you can specify. For example, you could notify a recipient that a message has been rejected or placed into Junk Email.
• The Exchange 2013 action Generate incident report and send it can now be directed to multiple distribution lists.

The Exchange Management Shell makes available a new high-capacity, high-performance eDiscovery search tool called Compliance Search, which can quickly search an unlimited number of mailboxes in a single search. You can also run an unlimited number of searches in parallel. In contrast, In-Place eDiscovery allows you to search up to 10,000 mailboxes per search and supports up to two simultaneous searches.

The redesigned search architecture of Exchange 2016 has moved from a synchronous to an asynchronous and decentralized one. By distributing the workload across multiple servers, the new search architecture offers higher performance, more reliability, and greater scale. The number of mailboxes that can be searched using the console has doubled, and the number that can be searched using Exchange Management Shell is unlimited.

How Progent Can Help You Deploy and Maintain Exchange 2016
Progent's certified Exchange consultants can assist organizations of any size to follow industry best practices to plan and carry out an efficient migration to Exchange 2016 from Exchange 2013, Exchange 2010, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2003, or Exchange 2000. Progent has experience with every facet of migrating to Exchange 2016 and can provide as-needed assistance with services such as documenting Exchange 2016 architecture with topo diagrams, specs and details; prepping the schema, domain, and forest for Exchange 2016; designing and configuring Database Availability Groups (DAGs) for fault tolerance and fast recovery; setting up DirSync; updating the firewall, creating SSL certs and resolving SSL issues; configuring IIS; writing PowerShell scripts; and verifying mail flow.

Progent's certified SharePoint consultants and Microsoft 365 integration consultants can help you create on-premises, cloud-based, or hybrid collaboration solutions. To support mobility with Exchange 2016, Progent can provide iPhone and iPad integration, and Android phone and tablet consulting. Progent's load balancing consultants are expert at deploying and troubleshooting cost-effective ADC technology from a range of vendors including Barracuda, Cisco, Citrix NetScaler, Coyote Point/Fortinet, Kemp Technologies, and NGINX.

Progent's disaster recovery/business continuity consultants can help you develop and implement a comprehensive disaster recovery plan for Exchange 2016 based on geographically dispersed physical data centers or based on a combination of a local data center plus cloud-based resources, and Progent's certified information security consultants can help you define and validate messaging security policies compliant with your internal guidelines and with industry or government requirements. In addition, Progent's Cisco CCIE certified network engineers can help you design, build and troubleshoot a cost-effective, secure, and resilient network infrastructure to support your Exchange 2016 environment. Progent has decades of experience working with Exchange and can help you follow leading practices to move efficiently and non-disruptively through the key phases of coexistence (with Exchange 2010 SP3 or later), piloting, mailbox migration, decommissioning, and remediation.

Microsoft 365 Exchange Online Integration with On-prem Exchange
Microsoft has made a strong effort to enable seamless hybrid ecosystems that combine Microsoft 365 and local Exchange deployments. This permits you to have some mailboxes located on your on-premises datacenter and other mailboxes resident on Microsoft 365. Progent's certified Exchange consultants can assist your organization with any phase of designing, integrating and debugging your hybrid Exchange network. Progent's Exchange consultants can deliver as-needed support to help you resolve challenging technical problems and also can provide comprehensive project management outsourcing to make sure your hybrid Exchange initiative is completed on schedule and on budget. To find out more about Progent's online consulting support for integrating Microsoft 365 and on-premises Exchange environments, go to Microsoft 365 integration with on-prem Exchange.

Online Consulting Saves Time and Money
A key to Progent's value proposition is the ability to provide advanced online consulting at an easily affordable price. Online consulting eliminates the costs and delays associated with travel and prevents needless loss of productivity. Progent has delivered successful online consulting, application development, and troubleshooting services to businesses of all sizes in every state in the U.S. (visit Progent's customer testimonials). Progent's seasoned IT consultants, developers and technical support specialists, including one of the country's largest independent teams of Cisco CCIE-certified network consultants, are available for as-needed expertise to solve particularly challenging problems or can provide comprehensive project management outsourcing or co-sourcing for major initiatives such as Exchange 2016 migration. When necessary, Progent can also provide consultants onsite in major metropolitan areas throughout the U.S.

Download Progent's Exchange 2016 Migration Support Datasheet
To download a PDF datasheet about Progent's Exchange 2016 Migration Consulting Services, click:
Progent's Exchange 2016 Migration Consulting Datasheet. (PDF - 101 KB)

Progent's Consulting Services for Microsoft Technology
For organizations of any size throughout the U.S., Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can provide low-cost remote computer assistance and professional consulting support for the entire array of Microsoft .NET servers. Progent can provide Microsoft Windows Server 2022 planning and migration services, Windows Server 2019 migration consulting, Windows Server 2016 hybrid cloud integration, Windows Server 2012 R2 migration help, Windows Server 2008 R2 expertise, and Microsoft Windows 2003 Server upgrade help. Progent's migration, integration, optimization, and support services cover network design, configuration, and management outsourcing for project analysis and documentation, local and off-site IT support and system troubleshooting, Help Desk Support, comprehensive security consulting, full-service outsourcing, and ProSight Virtual Hosting service.

Progent also can deliver a wide range of remote desktop support services such as Windows 11 planning and upgrade assistance, Windows 10 configuration assistance, Windows 8.1 consulting, Microsoft Windows 7 maintenance, preparing for to 64-bit computing, Office desktop and Microsoft 365 collaboration support, and automating Business Desktop Deployment.

In case your business requires immediate remote support from a Microsoft certified engineer, refer to Progent's Urgent Remote Technical Help.

Find out more about Progent's Support for Microsoft Servers.

To ask Progent about consulting expertise for Exchange Server technology, call 1-800-993-9400 or refer to Contact Progent.