It’s hard to believe how far messaging has come since the world’s first message was sent back in late 1971. That first message was sent between two computers sitting next to each other. Fast-forward 36 years later to the present day, and we find that the modern business world now runs on e-mail. E-mail has moved beyond mission critical, beyond business critical, and has become a permanent fixture in our lives.
For one-third of those 36 years, Microsoft Exchange Server has been a part of business e-mail around the world. Every day, millions upon millions of messages traverse Exchange servers throughout the globe. At any given second, a message is being processed by an Exchange server somewhere in the world. To make sure their systems are running at peak performance with optimal security, Exchange administrators must understand a variety of external elements, such as storage and hardware characteristics, operating system fundamentals and monitoring, Internet Information Services, Active Directory, Domain Name System, SMTP, and other Internet protocols. With the introduction of new Exchange technologies such as Unified Messaging, continuous replication, and transport agents, as well as ancillary technologies and products such as Windows PowerShell, Windows Rights Management Services, and Office Communications Server, the bailiwick of the Exchange administrator is growing bigger every day. Adding to that is a plethora of new terminology to understand, configure, and manage.