UPDATE 2/12/21
The Exchange Sustained Engineering Team continued servicing all customer issues for Exchange 2016 that were opened with Microsoft by the end of Mainstream Support, which was Oct 13, ...
Updated Feb 12, 2021
Version 12.0
Blog Post
Greg Taylor - EXCHANGE Thanks for the blog. Is there somewhere I can monitor for updates on this?
We have a number of sites with active directory and Azure AD Connect to sync user passwords with their MS365 business apps identity. A lot of these sites never had Exchange, they used a 3rd party email provider. We now want to add a mailbox to their MS365 account, but as soon as we tell the customer that in order to do so Microsoft expect them to provision a full blown Exchange 2016 server on-premise, with the hardware, installation and ongoing maintenance cost that brings just to manage a few AD user attributes, it becomes a deal breaker. None of them can remove on-premise active directory due to application software requirements, but one or two have reluctantly opted to remove Azure AD Connect - not an ideal 'solution'.
The sites that did have a few Exchange servers in their estate are quite happy to reduce that to just one for management purposes - but they are coming from a completely different start point than those sites who never had Exchange.
Best,
Kevin