Openings in the Exchange 12 (e12) TAP for companies with less than 500 employees

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Joel Stidley Posted: 10-10-2005 10:09 PM

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Are you an Exchange geek with a company with less than 500 employees?  Do you like to spend a ton of time in front of an Exchange server doing testing?  Do you like to be first on the block with new toys that you can't tell anyone about because of your NDA?  Well then you are just like me and want to read this posting on YHM@E by KC the E12 TAP Program Manager.

http://blogs.technet.com/exchange/archive/2005/10/10/412308.aspx

What's in it for TAP customers?

• Opportunity to provide feedback on E12, the next version of Exchange, directly to the product team.
• Conference calls with members of the product team.
• Production grade pre-release builds of E12.
• Access to free Microsoft Support (PSS) for E12 issues for the duration of the E12 TAP program.
• A head start in the next deployment cycle, taking advantage of new and enhanced features available in Exchange E12.
• KC's eternal gratitude. :-)

What do I have to commit to in order to participate in the E12 TAP?

• Jump through a few legal hoops, signing a TAP agreement, NDA and a few other documents.
• Deploy pre-RTM versions of Exchange E12 in your production environment.
• Commit to timely response of survey and feedback requests from Microsoft.
• Commit to providing resources for TAP activities for the duration of the program - people/time as well as machines.
• Provide us with deployment plans, including details of network topologies and EXBPA output reports.  (Required before we can give production approval for the pre-release code.)

What makes a good TAP customer?

Here are some qualities of a great TAP:

• Willing to dedicate the resources (people/time and machine) to testing the product as well as running it in production before RTM.
• Did I mention production yet? :-) We find that we get some of our best feedback through production deployments, and so we will prioritize nominations from customers willing to be aggressive in their production rollouts higher.
• Responsive to our requests for feedback (such as responding to surveys and attending conference calls).
• Gives constructive criticism with context - don't just stop at "foo sucks", but "here's why foo sucks for my exchange environment, and here's why I think bar would be better".
• Gives feedback even when not requested. We may not have sent a survey out or had a call about a topic, but if something about the product is problematic for you (or you love it! :-), we want to know.

I would like to participate. What's next?

If you're interested in participating in the E12 TAP program, send an email to e12ctap AT microsoft DOT com with the following information:

• Company Name
• Email address/name of a contact person at the company
• How many employees/users you have at your organization (we're looking for organizations with fewer than 500)
• What e-mail software those mailboxes are currently running on (if it's split across multiple versions of Exchange or other products, please tell us how many are on which product/product version)
• How many servers and mailboxes you are willing to put in production on E12 by February 2006.