<p>The Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC) in Austin came to its natural end on Wednesday evening when sessions halted at 6PM. Some technical conferences go on a little too long and become an endurance course. I don't think this happened at MEC because three days seemed to be the right length for attendees to be updated on the latest developments in the world of Exchange.</p><p>So what did we learn and what should we be prepared for over the next year or so? The keynote laid it out on Monday and a number of sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday hammered the point home that the combination of Outlook Web App (OWA) and Exchange Online (Office 365) is where most of the action will happen through the end of 2014. By that time service tenants should see lots of new and interesting features to play with in Microsoft's attempt to embrace social networking and remain kings of productivity. As an Office 365 user, I firmly expect to be using the clutter feature to help manage my Inbox and Groups to help focus the Inbox on people who are important to me. We'll see.</p><p>On the on-premises side, I fear that it will be steady as it goes with the regular quarterly cumulative updates for Exchange 2013 until Microsoft cranks up its focus on Exchange 2016, the next major release due at the end of 2015 (October is my bet). Exchange 2016 should gather up all the features previously available to Office 365 users and bring them to on-premises. By that time the bugs and any early teething problems in features like the Enterprise Graph should be sorted and ready to enter the more difficult deployment arena of on-premises servers.</p><p>There's lots of work to be done before Exchange 2016 even enters the planning horizon for most customers. Exchange 2013 CU5 is on its way and should contain the normal mix of fixes and improvements, including the ability for MAPI over HTTP to deal with legacy public folders. MAPI over HTTP is also the key for providing Outlook with dual-factor authentication capabilities.</p><p><a href="http://windowsitpro.com/blog/microsoft-exchange-conference-2014-finishes-high">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/microsoft-windows/5-cool-changes-coming-owa-office-365-exchange-and-outlook-239651">5 cool changes coming for OWA, Office 365, Exchange, and Outlook</a> (InfoWorld (blog))</p><p><a href="http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/news/2240217377/Office-365-to-get-feature-priority-over-on-premises-Exchange">Office 365 to get feature priority over on-premises Exchange</a> (TechTarget)</p><p><a href="http://windowsitpro.com/blog/day-2-mec-delivers-great-sessions-great-content">Day 2 of MEC delivers great sessions, great content</a> (Windows IT Pro (blog))</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dKUX82EUtC7WbhMkveSA8ntNsD_WM&authuser=0&ned=us">5 additional articles.</a></p>