Starting to Plan for Exchange Server 2010 MCM...

So my next rotation isn't until later this year (we will annouce exact dates soon, but a hint for you... mid to late September and early November... read into that what you will....) and so I now have some time to catch up on other things, get exam re-takes completed (a lot booked in, so should be more good news to annouce over the next month or so), maybe even take a vacation (sorry, that's holiday to the real English speakers...) etc.

But one really exciting thing I have planned and wanted to post about is the re-development of the curriculum to teach Exchange 2010. Over the few weeks I'm spending time with my instructors, some Product Group folks and anyone else who has an opinion, to discuss how we will change the content to teach the new version of Exchange. It's actually going to be quite challenging I suspect. There's a LOT of new stuff and nothing is going away... That sounds a bit marketing to me, but it's true, think about it. Rather than risk falling foul of an NDA and listing a bunch of new features, I'll avoid listing them and let some other web site tell you what is coming, but the real issue is that we aren't taking anything out... So, it's not like we can drop content to include new features. That's my problem. Sure there is no CCR/SCR/LCR as such, but now we have DAG, so that's an easy swap I guess, but what about the new transport, maillbox, federation and CAS features? There's lot of new stuff, but the old stuff, routing, perf and scale, certificates and namespace, storage fundamentals etc, are all still there... That's my problem, how do we fit it all in without extending the duration? I'm sure we'll work it out, but it will make for an interesting few weeks as we have to prioritize what we want to teach and then build a course around it...

So, if you have an opinion, drop me a line, post here, tell me what you think. And if you don't have an opinion, enjoy the weather, get some rest and then carry on with your life, it's ok, we'll work it out.

As another reminder, the 2010 deliveries we will be doing will have real expereince pre-reqs for attendance. If you are great at 2007 but aren't already involved in a TAP or RDP program, then 2007 is the cert for4 you, you can upgrade later.

Greg