<p>Yes, I realize Exchange 2013 went GA ("general availability," meaning released for sale) in November 2012. But when people asked me about how to deploy it in their existing environments, I had to tell them to view Exchange 2013 as "beta" until Microsoft delivered all the pieces for an appropriate deployment.</p><p>As an Exchange MVP, I love Exchange 2013. But this latest iteration of Exchange has caused more than a little angst due to its significant changes (such as its new Web-based administration center, a new managed store that cut the number of mounted databases to 50, a new server role architecture, and so forth). But the greatest cause for stress was the inability to deploy it in any environment other than a greenfield. That's right: You couldn't deploy Exchange 2013 if you had any previous versions of Exchange in use.</p><p>[ J. Peter Bruzzese reveals Exchange 2013's cool new features and hidden gems. | Stay atop key Microsoft technologies in our Technology: Microsoft newsletter. ]</p><p>Initially, Microsoft told us the migration incompatibility with Exchange 2007 and 2010 would be fixed with a rollup update for Exchange 2007 and with Service Pack 3 for Exchange 2010 -- so we waited. Finally on Feb. 12, 2013, Exchange 2010 SP3 arrived, letting Exchange 2010 coexist with Exchange 2013 and enabling the installation of Exchange 2010 on Windows Server 2012. Update Rollup 10 for Exchange Server 2007 SP3 was also released. Awesome! But you still couldn't install Exchange 2013 into an Exchange 2010 environment.</p><p><a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/microsoft-windows/exchange-2013-finally-ready-production-use-216092">Keep reading...</a></p>