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Software engineering is becoming increasingly more complicated. But as this field continues to get harder, life gets even easier for email hosting and consumers alike. One of the perks for younger IT/cloud administrators who are just now joining the industry’s workforce, is the advantage of using progressive features such as the Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW), a feature included in the Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 (SP2).

According to Windows IT Pro (News - Alert), Jorge Diaz, the HCW has “many of us in the community… ecstatic…” because it gets the job done in “fewer than 10 clicks of a mouse”— which is significantly less arduous than doing the things the old-fashioned way. In this case, the “old fashioned” way means using the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant (ExDeploy) which was an over-60-step process, detailed in a manual of 65 pages of content.

Although there doesn’t seem to be any email hosting provider who are complaining about having an easier job, Diaz expresses his concern for newer hosts who are unfamiliar with pre-SP2 methods. Because the hybrid wizard does all of the heavy lifting, there could be important fundamental concepts about configuration that get lost over time.

Tony Redmond, the author of Exchange Server 2010 Inside Out, shared concerns that run parallel to Diaz’s. Not too long ago, Redmond noted that there are “valuable features” that are omitted from the Web-based Exchange administration center for Exchange 2013. The omitted features include context-sensitive menus that Microsoft’s (News - Alert) software engineers believed to be superfluous for Office 365. Redmond considered this reasoning to be “smelly horse manure.”

But because industry experts like Diaz and Redmond consistently share their expertise with their respective communities, there are plenty of opportunities for next-generation email hosts to research all the details of the new user interface, if they want.  

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX.  Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.