EWS is the only realistic way for "not Outlook" to work - MAPI is not exactly an open API.

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.

Whatever you are smoking, I want some.

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.

"Nope, they will just bite the bullet and rewrite everything to use Graph API instead."

LOL, no I won't.

> loving the new Electron version

Please take a pen and a sheet of paper and attempt to draw a clock-face with the hands pointing to the current time.

As Sean Burke puts it on the related bug on Bugzilla (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1847846#c2):

> 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.

>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.

I'd widen that to "I don't want to use outlook" which includes Linux installs but also all thunderbird windows users, I'd think.

Yes, as a long time Thunderbird on Windows user I second this.

Thunderbird is frankly the only Windows email client worth using if you do any development using email. The tools available as add-ons simply aren't so readily available for other options, especially not for free.

"my work uses exchange on-prem" is pretty large though, especially in headcount (enterprises).

I don't know of any published numbers about specific user count (would be very interested to see them), but in terms of deployments it's gone from more than half on prem in 2018 to ~16% in 2023. Of that 16%, I wonder how many users are both willing and able to use an alternate client?

Of the organizations that have Exchange Server on premises, I'd bet the lions share are hybrid, with regular user mailboxes in the cloud, using the server(s) for application relays, etc.

And yet it's exactly the situation I'm in. I use evolution on Ubuntu through a horizon virtual desktop, purely for better exchange support. I switched from thunderbird on windows to outlook on windows when I started having a lot more meetings to coordinate, and then evolution when a virtual desktop solution was rolled out and Linux was an option for desktops at work again. Quite a few other people in my department that just use thunderbird on Linux because they can't stand outlook or using the web version would happily have better outlook support.

Perhaps there is an audience here and it just doesn't match your own experiences.

I’m not sure what you are talking about. When did I say where I was in that venn?

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.

Does evolution calendar work seamlessly with Exchange? I used Thunderbird with the Exchange addon for three years and email and contacts worked without any problems, but calendar was bad. I could see my calendar but couldn't edit it from Thunderbird.

Not seamlessly. It seems to work but is half-broken. Id does not properly pair invitations, updates and RSVPs from emails with auto-created items (by the Exchange server) and you end up with duplicates and mess. At leas that was my experience when I used this setup. Then moved to evolution for email and web outlook exclusively for calendar. Now I am on windows partly for lack of proper Outlook and Teams on linux (sad).

I'm a Thunderbird-on-Windows-in-VM-on-Mac user for one on-prem and one web-but-can't-access-on-non-managed-windows-endpoint VM account.

> I think they’re making a mistake using EWS

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.

Email solutions are company-wide, and companies are big.

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.

Can't up-to-date on-premises installs have Graph API enabled?

Because you basically have no other realistic choice for the time being when dealing with crap such as Exchange.

Em Client (www.emclient.com) has supported Exchange for a while I think

As a linux user, it's more like either die by the web version or migrate the company to another mail solution. And yes, I know evolution does ews as well, but i got tired of sync issues and having to switch from deb to flatpack because of it and other annoyances over the years.

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

Not everyone is using Exchange Online.

only like vast majority, yes, i know

We'll see how long that remains the case when Microsoft can't keep the Chinese government out of its cloud.

100%, but they are still not really interested in onpremises exchange, at least the latest version is 2019 which is no longer in mainline support, only security with no new version announced

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?

Teams will crater in popularity once it's no longer bundled with Office 365. Nobody uses Teams because it's good, they use it because it was free with stuff they already had.

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.

> Teams will crater in popularity once it's no longer bundled with Office 365. Nobody uses Teams because it's good, they use it because it was free with stuff they already had.

And what if the unbundling doesn't affect the price? Don't confuse MSFT making mediocre products with them being commercially stupid.

I don't think we will be able to get rid of teams that easily 1) it's a PITA to migrate teams accounts between tenants not mentioning migrating stuff off teams to another solution 2) companies use teams as "shared folders" in respective channels 3) copilot which enterprises even pay extra for

Teams shared folders are simply SharePoint folders. Like, they literally are. So you're not dependent on teams for accessing them.

technically correct, but people would still need to get used to the change

Working for a non-tech company, I can tell you that most love Teams. It was a godsend during Covid, people haven’t really seen anything else, and in all honesty it does what it’s supposed to do

You think outsourced point-and-click administrators of company on-prem servers could do better?

A valid point - you can't match Microsoft's resources and in-house expertise.

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.

Indeed, one of my favorite inconvenient truths is that geo-blocking remains one of the most effective, and essentially free attack surface reductions you can make.

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.

Yes. Managing Exchange is not that hard. Having everyone's eggs in one basket though is just dumb.

Not that hard for you. I think, you’re overestimating the average employee. At my current company, the maintainers absolutely don’t have a clue how it works, and they are completely unusable when there is a problem with it. They don’t know even the basic things, they just blindly follow transcripts from Microsoft, like telecallers.