We’re pleased to announce a preview build of Exchange Server 2019 is now available (download removed as Exchange 2019 is now released).
We strongly believe Office 365 delivers the best and most cost-...
Updated Jul 01, 2019
Version 2.0
Blog Post
I'm very disappointed to hear that you're removing UM from Exchange 2019 and I hope that you'll reconsider that decision. Or at the very least, allow for some sort of compatibility mode where mailboxes on Exchange 2019 can continue to be UM enabled as long as an Exchange 2016 server remains in the mix to handle the SIP trunks, etc.
The suggestion to use Cloud Voicemail as a replacement is not reasonable. First, if I'm still using on-prem Exchange its because I have various political and/or technical reasons why a cloud service doesn't work for my organization. So telling me to use a cloud service to replace functionality stripped out of my on-prem server just doesn't make any sense - if I could use the cloud, I'd be using the cloud. Second, even if I could clear the political and technical hurdles to using Cloud Voicemail, it's not even just a "drop-in" service. I also have to go deploy Skype for Business and (if I'm understanding the documentation right) toss out my IP-PBX. I hope I'm wrong about that, because there is no way I could get support for such a migration.
So, what should have been a straightforward upgrade/migration to Exchange 2019 during our next hardware refresh now becomes much more complicated and expensive since I'll have to purchase an on-prem voicemail system.
- We appreciate this might be tough for some customers, and respect your position. I will say, you don't have to upgrade to 2019 the moment it arrives, or at all. We're not changing anything with regard to UM in earlier versions, they will be on working while you figure out your longer term plan.
- This decision is yet another HORRIBLE one from the Microsoft Exchange team. Leave it to the Exchange team to remove functionality that has been in Exchange for many versions and to spring that on us at the end of a development cycle and tell us that we need to switch to their cloud offering and essentially rip and replace our existing systems, which weren't cheap, to align with what they think everyone on the planet should be doing. I've been a huge supporter and user of Microsoft products for decades, but this is absolutely rediculous... How hard could it possibly be to LEAVE a feature in a product? This is as dumb as when they removed fax functionality for no reason and when they discontinued Forefront for Exchange, leaving EOP as the only truly viable alternative... Had it occurred to you people that support companies have built solutions around the functionality your products offer and you cause major issues for them every time you pull this crap? This makes the phone systems that my company set up for clients, integrating voicemail and auto attendant functionality with Exchange, unworkable as offered since part of the pitch was to have it all in a nicely integrated system, keeping up with the latest releases of Exchange and Office.. What ever happened to giving warning that a feature would be removed in the future by depricating it in the current version, so that integrators could at least know what's going to happen and can account for it in their designs? Also, I realize you want everyone to go to the cloud, but that is never going to happen, and the more you do these things, the more loyal customers you're going to push to other solutions. I realize that Azure is growing incredibly fast, but that doesn't mean you should alienate yourselves from everyone else. You're making it harder and harder for people to WANT to do business with you...