I’ve ignored blogging for long enough. Perhaps it was because I was too busy with the day-to-day work that went on inside HP to have time to blog as well as do other (more interesting) things such as writing articles and books, not to mention the time required to do all the investigation necessary to prepare to write. Now that I have retired from HP, I obviously have more time on my hands, so writing a blog seems like a good thing to do.

I’m keeping myself busy writing a book on Exchange 2010 – or more precisely, Exchange 2010 SP1. It’s taken a while to conclude a contract for the book’s publication, but I am happy to have finally signed with Microsoft Press so that the book will appear as part of the “Inside Out” series. Moving from my previous publisher wasn’t my first option because I had a great relationship with Digital Press (and had done 12 books with them). Unfortunately, the publication arm of Digital Equipment Corporation went through a huge evolution since 1992 and Elsevier, the latest owner of the label, decided that they didn’t want to do any more IT books.

In any case, Microsoft Press has a new deal with O’Reilly books to publish books jointly, which seems like a good alignment between two companies to merge Microsoft’s technology expertise with O’Reilly’s publishing prowess. I’m looking forward to seeing how the copyediting process unfolds as I am sure that I have many writing habits that have developed over the years that the Microsoft Press copyeditors will “help” me with.

The book obviously won’t appear until after Microsoft ships Exchange 2010 SP1. They’ve just announced that a public beta of SP1 will be available at TechEd North America (June), so you can assume that the final code will appear later than that… In any case, the writing, editing, and technical review process will be ongoing as the code develops and my aim is to make sure that the content is as up to date and complete as possible. Given the amount of new material that became available in Exchange 2010 and the changes and updates that Microsoft has made in SP1, this will be quite a task.

– Tony