Microsoft Exchange Server 2013

The book I read to research this post was Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Unleashed which is an excellent book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. This book is quite comprehensive in its coverage of Exchange 2013. The first version of this software was Exchange 4.0 and the reason it was version 4 but the earliest version was that versions 3 and earlier were Microsoft Mail which was a desktop program not a server product. It had nothing to do with Exchange in its software architecture. Prior to this if a company wanted a server communications network they had to use Novell Groupwise which meant all the hassles of making sure the Novell operating system ran on their servers. Exchange is designed in particular to run with Lync 2013, Sharepoint 2012, Office 365 and in particular Outlook. Outlook comes in several flavours, there is OWA which can be used on a guest machine via the internet, or Outlook Anywhere which works via mobile devices. Sharepoint is useful if the works have to work together and communicate via computer in a complex way. Exchange is more than capable of straightforward communication. Lync handles instant messenging and Im in general has caused problems for companies in other programs because viruses can exploit vulnerabilities inherent in it. Having it in a server product that integrates with server Microsoft products is a way around that.If a computer handles sensitive data the company should consider issuing staff with smartcards you swipe in addition to using strong passwords and you can buy PGP which stands for pretty good privacy certificates which you can use with the computers in particular to discourage man in the middle attacks. I enjoyed this book which would have been out of my league had I not done a video training course in Exchange 2013. It covers it in lots of detail and must be one of the definitive books on the subject. I think a lot of people would find this book difficult to follow.

 

 

Yammer

The book I read to research this post was Yammer Starter by Ralph Roberts which is a very good book which I read at

http://safaribooksonline.com

This book is a bit on the short side but is on an interesting subject and I think alot of the information is quite relevant especially to IT people in businesses. Yammer is the original corporate network solution and there is a free version along with a premium and enterprise versions. For most businesses all they need is the free version. It integrates with Microsoft Dynamics CRM & MS Sharepoint and obviously there is probably going to be hosting fees involved if it doesn’t run on a company server. Microsoft bought the Yammer company for $1.2 billion several years ago with a view to promoting Dynamics & Sharepoint. You can’t have subgroups in Yammer but you can have 1 big corporate group and then lots of separate smaller groups. Obviously when you join a group you need your company email address and this has to be authorized by the network administrator as an allowable member. Of course there are alternatives to Yammer like Chatter & other companies like Sugar CRM & Salesforce.com are eager to promote their own CRM solutions.Also Yammer integrates with Twitter & Facebook and has things like newsfeeds which are similiar to the latter. I think a lot of the program which is downloadable from Yammer.com is quite intuitive especially if you have experience of Facebook. I did quite enjoy reading this book although I thought it’s a bit short.