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Exchange Server through 2025

Holding Back

Article from ADMIN 75/2023

By Christian Schulenburg

The next generation of Exchange 2019 was announced for the second half of 2021, but the release plan was revoked in 2022, and the next Exchange was postponed until 2025. We take an in-depth look at the current timetable.

Microsoft has broken the triennial update cycle for Exchange and does not expect to release a new version until the second half of 2025. By then, seven years will have passed since the release of Exchange 2019 in 2018. According to the people in Redmond, this postponement is mainly the result of the large number of security problems. For example, the Hafnium exploit in early 2021 exposed a vulnerability that affected many on-premises Exchange servers and highlighted how important it still is to maintain your on-premises Exchange installation. It took some time to eliminate the vulnerability on the majority of servers.

To close security gaps more quickly in the future, at least temporarily, Microsoft decided to integrate the Exchange Emergency Mitigation Service (EEMS) directly with Exchange. Moreover, the Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI), already included in Windows 2016 and 2019, was added to Exchange 2016 and 2019, allowing AMSI-enabled antivirus software to scan the content of HTTP requests sent to Exchange servers and block malicious requests before they are processed.

Additionally, Microsoft has repeatedly released security updates (SUs), which led to a change in 2022 in the way SUs are installed [1]. All told, substantial resources have gone into stabilizing Exchange, ultimately at the expense of developing the next version.

Route to the New Exchange

Companies still using Exchange 2013 that had hoped to switch to the new version right away will now have to switch to Exchange 2019 very quickly because support for Exchange 2013 ended in April 2023. Exchange 2016 left mainstream support and moved to extended support in October 2021, meaning that Exchange 2016 also should not be used any longer. During this phase, Exchange will not see cumulative updates, but security updates will continue to be released. Exchange 2019 will

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