All new Microsoft Office 2016 is now available for download and evaluation. The prevew installation requires internet connectivity however it downloads the product pretty fast.

Office 2016 Preview

Direct Download

Please be aware, this is only a preview version. If you have many add-ins works with application such as outlook, be aware that you would only have one outlook instance (app) running at a given time.

The installation does not give any flexibility in selecting applications (custom installation option), rather it proceeded with the full installation mode. It took close to 20 minutes to complete the installation.

The overall look has changes bit and few functionality have been testes in outlook such as attachment history, theme etc.

Read more here - Office 2016 Public Preview now available

The uninstallation process do not show any progress bar, so the only way is to wait until the uninstallation process to complete. Enjoy and be ready to get your hands dirty with a list of new Microsoft products lined up for release in few months from now such as Exchange Server, Sharepoint etc.

-Praveen

I recently posted couple of articles discussing the Exchagne Server 2016 features and changes (Exchange Server 2016 Architecture, farewell to CAS role & Coming Soon - A first look at Exchange Server 2016 & On-Premises Version is to Stay).

Take a look at the video, and explore more details on the new On-Premise version Exchange, Exchange Server 2016.

-Praveen

The Exchange Server 2016 built on the similar architecture as in Exchange Server 2013, with one major change by removing the Client Access Server role. MS has removed Client Access Server role and introduced client access services to the Mailbox role. As a result, the Mailbox server role contains,

It might remind some of us the architecture in Exchange Server 2003, but with a FE role. However, we still need to wait and see the actual product and its capabilities.

As per the introductory note, it is underlining that MS is not compromising the backend infrastructure client connectivity security. Even by removing the CAS role, no clients would connect directly to the back-end endpoints on the Mailbox server; instead, clients connect client access services and are routed (via local or remote proxy) to the Mailbox server that hosts the active database that contains the user’s mailbox.

There are changes in the architecture of DAG as well. As usual, the building block concept is still valid, as the additional mailbox servers can be added to form HA unit with the following additional enhancements,

The following diagram from MS shows the client protocol connectivity.

This is not all, there are major other developments in the overall architecture, please follow the article from Microsoft Exchange Blog here. Happy reading.

-Praveen