Numerous organizations around the globe still use Exchange 2003. The reasons for that are various – after 10 years on the market, administrators know the program inside out, server machines were powerful enough to suit companies’ needs etc. However, ten years in the IT industry is a whole era and much has changed. The explosion of mobile devices that are accessing Exchange mailboxes directly, the Cloud, the release of MS Exchange 2013 and many other factors are making the 2003 version obsolete. Not to mention that in 2014 Microsoft terminates technical support – no more patches, updates and security fixes for Exchange 2003. These reasons are pushing many administrators to consider migrating to more modern solutions, such as Exchange 2013. The sad fact is that Microsoft provides no way to migrate/upgrade Exchange 2003 directly to 2013 at this moment. It doesn’t mean, however, you are left with no options if you would like to move straight to the newest version of Microsoft’s email platform. There are several solutions you can consider. The first one is the “double hop” migration. Drawbacks of double hop migration Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2013 can’t co-exist in one Active Directory forest. On the other hand, moving users’ mailbox data between two different forests is complicated when you want to use only native migration tools. We can complaint about Microsoft’s policy on that matter but it will still remain a fact. Currently there is no native path to make an intra-organizational upgrade from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2013. For that reason many system engineers recommend to split the process into two steps: First upgrade Exchange 2003 to 2010 version and then migrate to Exchange 2013. This method is called the double-hop migration, which obviously doubles the work required and the risk of the process going awry. It also requires some important resources, like spare hardware (if you have it), or putting up additional virtual machines only to host the temporary environment before moving it to the target location. The entire operation must be planned and done with maximum care, in order to reduce the downtime of mail servers. Will you take that risk? Export/Import PST – good idea? If you operate on a small amount of users working on PST files during the migration can work for you in a way. However, the thing might not be as simple as it seems. Not to mention the fact that the manual export/import operation between the two versions of Exchange might be a bit of time consuming, you might face some other problems which will make the whole process even longer to complete than you initially thought. The first issue is connected with legacyExchangeDN X.500 address that will have to be manually added to each re-imported mailbox as proxy address in the target location. If you don’t do that right after re-creating the mailboxes in Exchange 2013, your users will not be able to use their email in a normal way. The solution to that is quite simple, but obviously it adds some extra work to the entire migration process and carries a risk of longer service unavailability during the migration. You will find more information on that topic here. You can also use this article as a guide. The steps described in it can be used with an on-premises installation of Exchange 2013 as well. Another important problem to consider while using the export/import PST option are public folders, if you use them. Re-importing them in th

We are happy to announce that CodeTwo Exchange Rules 2010 has earned the “Works with Windows® Server 2008 R2” Logo. This means our program was not only tested compatible with this system but also that it offers our clients improved reliability and security features, sophisticated management options, as well as an innovative and user-friendly interface. We will do our best to continue our mission and strive only for perfection so that all our software would satisfy our users' needs, and still remain as simple and logical as possible. View CodeTwo Exchange Rules profile in Solution Finder, Microsoft Partner's business solutions database. Learn more about CodeTwo Exchange Rules 2010 Download CodeTwo Exchange Rules 2010 free trial

A couple of weeks ago we announced that the works on the new CodeTwo Exchange Sync are underway. And here it is. CodeTwo Exchange Sync is now shipping.