Acknowledgments

As you can probably imagine, writing a book is a hefty task. It requires the inspiration and coordination of many different groups of people without whom it would not be possible. Therefore, I am very grateful for this opportunity to call them out for some well-earned recognition.

Throughout this book, we have worked to ensure that you get the very best advice. This has meant working with our accumulated network of friends and colleagues, calling in favors to ensure that we take advantage of the insights of the top experts in their fields.

I would like to start by thanking Neil Johnson and Nicolas Blank personally. Both fall into the friends and colleagues category. We have worked together in various capacities over the last several years, and without their knowledge, enthusiasm, and sheer hard work, this book would absolutely never have happened.

Of course, outside of the authors, the other major driver behind a book like this is the publisher. As always, Sybex has helped us at every stage of the process with a superb team, starting with Mariann Barsolo, our acquisitions editor, who helped us shape the book and hone in on the audience, Gary Schwartz, our development editor, who put up with the random formatting and grammar that we came up with and turned it into something resembling what you see now, and Liz Britten and the copy editing team who did a crack job in getting this polished for printing while accommodating some late changes! Over all, Pete Gaughan had the job of pushing us to keep at least within some semblance of a schedule!

That leaves one very important person in the team, our technical editor, Henrik Walther. Henrik had a big part to play in ensuring the technical accuracy of the examples throughout the book. As someone with huge experience in the Exchange world, he also provided useful guidance and thoughts on the project as a whole.

As previously mentioned, one of the things that made this book possible was our close network of colleagues who contributed. I would like to give special thanks to the following group of people who contributed significant chunks—up to and including whole chapters.

• Bhargav Shukla, Director of Product Research and Innovation at KEMP Technologies
• Ruth Bacci, Exchange Consultant at Microsoft UK
• Glen Scales, Exchange MVP who works as a freelance developer and engineer specializing in Exchange development
• Steve Goodman, Exchange MVP who works as a technical architect at one of the UK's leading IT services providers
• Nic Bishop, Exchange Technical Solution Professional at Microsoft UK

I would also like to call out specifically members of the Exchange product group who provided support, guidance, and material:

• Julie Xu, Principal Group Program Manager, and Thomson Qu, Program Manager
• Astrid McClean, Senior Program Manager, Quentin Christensen, Program Manager, and Ryan Wilhelm, SDE
• Greg Taylor, Principal Program Manager Lead

—Nathan Winters

There are many people who helped me form ideas or simply spent time with me talking about design and Exchange in general. Among these, I would most like to thank all of my colleagues and customers, without whom my contribution to this book would have been impossible.

I would also like to thank the following people specifically for their help:

• Matt Gossage for his help and insight on the storage and monitoring chapters
• Conrad Sidey for believing in me and making himself available to talk about pretty much anything that I needed to discuss
• Robert Gillies, Andrew Ehrensing, Ross Smith IV, Greg Taylor, Jeff Mealiffe, Ramon Infante, David Espinoza, John Rodriguez, Alexandre Costa, Michael Wilson, Brian Day, and Scott Schnoll, who all provided guidance to me about deploying or designing Exchange Server 2013

—Neil Johnson

I have many people to thank in writing this book, starting with the fine people at Wiley as well as my coauthors, Nathan Winters and Neil Johnson. I would like to extend my thanks to the following individuals:

• Joe Newbert for language and process in dissecting the finer points of requirements in Chapter 1
• Boris Lokhvitsky for your kindness and patience, making the mathematical world accessible to the common man in Chapter 13

—Nicolas Blank