Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 was rolled out with a lot of enhancement and later in Exchange Server 2010 SP1 further improvements centered at /hosting mode which encouraged hosters to sell hosted exchange other than on-premise deployment and /hosting mode deployment was adopted by numerous firms and those who sell hosted exchange. Although, /hosting mode resolved different challenges for hosters but at the same time it had limitation as compared to on-premise mode and unluckily these limitation hindered doing business because fundamental requirements were unmet in /hosting mode. So, Microsoft realized the lack of feature set shipped with /hosting mode and decided to move ahead with release of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP2 which is expected to be released later this year.
/Hosting mode deployment basically uses different Active Directory structure and configurations as compared to On-premise mode so if you are using /hosting mode than unfortunately you may put yourself in trouble because Microsoft will no longer be continuing /hosting mode and does not recommend it either. In SP2, /hosting mode will be available but not feature or functionality will be added and will not be recommended by Microsoft at all as mentioned in the announcement that hosters will be supported using on-premise configurations from SP2 onwards.
In a nutshell, SP2 is going to be entirely dead end for /hosting mode and the remedies are quite limited. Either you should migrate to on-premise mode or get connected with your automation control panel solution provider because Microsoft has clearly stated the following:
“We recommend that you work with an automation vendor and use their solution. Your vendor of choice will be your only source of support.”
MachSol being Microsoft Gold Partner provides comprehensive hosting automation solution and control panel for Microsoft Exchange i.e. MachPanel that not only supports Microsoft Exchange 2010 /hosting mode but on-premise mode as well. We have ready to go migration toolkits and we also offer professional services and consultancy to help you migrate from older/non-support versions of Microsoft Exchange and other products like Dynamics CRM, SharePont and OCS/Lync.
Feel free to contact us for further information and assistance.