E2K7 pre-SP1 was a real challenge and we're Exchange hosts and know that product well enough to have enabled Internet RPC over TCP using forced encryption over TCP/IP through ISA 2000 - back in 2000 and to have deployed RPC over HTTPS in Aug 2003 - a year before it was made stupid proof - AND... well enough then and now to have an Exchange answer properly for ALLL hosted domains under ActiveSync, which requires several hacks.
E2K7 was, while not a nightmare, extreme in the context of time and resources. We tested and devised both the referral method, and UCC and use UCC and recommend it to support the publishing of each domain one supports. We still take things a step further and provide entirely unique silo(ed) experiences for customers - entirely unique presence that not even MS offers in their hosted product - this add a great deal of added effort and steps for each user added to any "one" domain. While I'd do it again, I caution that we have a very deep understanding of how to set up and run Microsoft servers, including Exchange. I wrote candidly about our experiences with it here, and provided some good means for others to test their connections - http://blog.libertech.net/blogs/lketchum/archive/2007/07/06/hidden-exchange-2007-outook-2007-connection-tests-and-monitoring.aspx pre-SP1 the most of teh process was in commandlets and there was no installer -heck, there was not much of a management interface and it still does not integrate with E2K3's snap ins.
Exchange 2010 is essentially, 2007 brought forward to make it 'easy' which is fine, but like it was for us after all we'd accomplished with 2K and 2K3, we felt a little cheated that others can now do so easily what we had to know so well. That knowledge took each of us a long time to gain. One last thing, we intentionally maintained a mixed environment so we could help other companies migrate, or add 2007.
We are among the few that customize OWA and by the by... each time there is a rollup to apply, MS blows it away, so we have a small program we created to add our customizations back.
Oh,.. and autodiscover and autoanswer, autoconfiguration are really great, but for a bit the OAB answer file stinks up the place when a remote OL Client is shut down. It takes a few sync cycles for it to provide a full CY of the GAL... I could go on and on with more... sorry.
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