why implementing ews when it is already deprecated and will be removed in two years? https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/re...
When EWS goes away so will rather a lot of customers, probably not enough to dent the bottom line (initially).
Then it becomes apparent that all email is equal and Exchange online becomes a footnote in history. Microsoft used to do email and then they shat the bed. All a bit embarrassing on the surface but not really.
Running email systems is a right old pain when all you really desire is data (and metadata) to mine and flog on to other data fetishists. Email is generally rather static and rather large in storage terms but it can yield gold from personal exchanges.
Ideally you get someone else to take the pain (AWS, Google and co - yes they get to mine but they bear the costs too) but ensure the marks use Outlook (and they do).
Then you change Outlook (loving the new Electron version) to store all credentials in your cloud. You use those creds to mine data within email held on other people's clouds. They front the cost of storage.
Smashing.
Exchange Online isn't going anywhere and I doubt deprecating EWS is going to matter because where are those customers going to go? GMail where they would have to completely change how they do business and use their APIs instead? Nope, they will just bite the bullet and rewrite everything to use Graph API instead.
As for Microsoft wanting EMail Data for mining vs not hosting, check out the MSFT revenue. It's not in Advertising space that's for sure.
LOL, no I won't.
> At present, EWS is our best way to enable support for both Exchange Online and on-premise installations.
> Graph API has been considered and may be considered again in future, but it currently provides narrower support than EWS and lacks some functionality for desktop applications. Even with the announcement that EWS support will be removed for Exchange Online, it's still valuable in the short term for enabling access for a wide userbase and in the long term for supporting users using on-premise installations.
But really tho…
The venn of “my work uses exchange on-prem”, “I use Linux desktop and can’t use outlook”, “I am aware of and would use exchange on Thunderbird” is pretty damn small.
I think they’re making a mistake using EWS and planning on targeting on-prem with the same or more weight than online.
Perhaps there is an audience here and it just doesn't match your own experiences.
I am Linux Desktop and hate outlook web.
I am the target user, and the post about Rust and using EWS gives me almost no confidence in this.
And I’m more aware that my case isn’t popular, and targeting on-premise is even less so.
In 2024.
Should they did it in 2012 the people would actually use it. For now - yes, anyone needing a thick mail client for Exchnage but not Outlook has figured their workarounds years ago.
Tons of companies use exchange on-prem either for historical reasons or legal reasons (e.g. they can't store email in the cloud - yes, this is very much a thing).
Beyond a certain size, companies inevitably have to support teams on different OSes. You have to let the accounting and finance guys use Windows (they'll die without Excel), you have to let the creatives use OSX or they'll throw a fit, and you have to let some in house IT teams use Linux.
But they all have to use the same email platform, and if it's on-prem exchange, the Linux guys are in a tough spot.
I mostly gave up on email anyway and switched to a better solution - teams (at least until July after which the deb package of v1 should stop working and v2 doesn't work for me in firefox - can't unmute myself in calls) /s
But you are probably a much less appealing target. Also, you might be willing to lock it down more than Microsoft, which has to please all those millions of customers and wants to admin it at the lowest cost possible - including possibly minimizing support calls by using permissive settings - and not with the most security possible.
If all your staff are in a country, there's no reason for your internal tools to be accessible from any other country. If all of your customers are in a country, there's no reason for any of your web presence to be accessible from any other country.
these days it looks like every email is a teams message anyways, so unless they also release onpremise teams server, i don't see a future of exchange very bright
maybe everyone will move to google workspace in the future?
2019 is technically still receiving feature updates because of the delay of the new Exchange on-prem, though however that transition takes place will be wild.
And what if the unbundling doesn't affect the price? Don't confuse MSFT making mediocre products with them being commercially stupid.