OK. You have completed the 20341 - Core Solutions of Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 course and you are now the greatest thing on earth when it comes to configuring and managing your email clients – heck, you know the difference between a mail enabled user and a mailbox enabled user, and are even able to show your users how to set up their Windows Phones and Windows 8 devices, IOS and Android devices for email! So, where to now?

The next step of course is the 20342 - Advanced Solutions of Microsoft Exchange Server 2013. Like most of the Microsoft ‘advanced’ or ‘design’ courses, this one pre-supposes in-depth knowledge from the 20341 course, and builds upon it, by going through the Exchange Server 2013 architecture in considerable depth, and adding in whole new chapters such as Unified Messaging and Lync Server, Office 365 integration, message compliance, security and of course installation, co-existence and migration scenarios. I don’t know about you, but that most certainly is a great boon in my understanding of the entire Exchange system, and really helps my troubleshooting abilities!

Office 365 and/or the concept of outsourcing your exchange management have both had a huge impact upon our industry lately, particularly in the small to medium businesses, so maybe you are looking to possibly moving your exchange management “to the cloud”? –Well the 20342 course can show you the various migration methods, where you are either moving your entire email system to the cloud or implementing a “hybrid” or co-existence system, where you have both on premise and Office 365 Exchange servers and clients.

Unified Messaging has also become a big player nowadays in most modern organisations. Unified Messaging is the integration of email, voice mail, voice access, and fax services in a user’s mailbox. It enables a user to access all types of messages within the same email client, such as Microsoft Office Outlook or other email clients. This course takes you all the way from describing telephony terminology though to configuring your own Lync Server.

And of course, arguably the biggest impact on most organisations over the last few years has been the concept of Virtualisation. This has had such a huge impact on every business, but do you know the most efficient and reliable ways to virtualise your modern exchange systems, what can be virtualised and what should not be, and build in not only exchange server redundancy, but also include site resiliency in the larger organisations? Again, these topics are featured in the 20342 course.

So if you are up for the next challenge, I would definitely recommend the 20342 course – you will be amazed at how much further you can take your Exchange knowledge, and really make a difference in your organisation’s Exchange implementations.