Microsoft has announced that Exchange 2019 CU14 will not be released this year. The CU14 has been postponed to January 2024. Just last year, the publication of Exchange CUs was changed so that only 2 CUs were to be published per year. The plan was to publish one CU in March and another in September. As was the case last year, there will be no further CU for Exchange 2019 this year. There will also only be two CUs for Exchange Server 2019, CU14 (planned release now in January 2024) and CU15 which is expected to be released in September 2024.
According to Microsoft, the CU14 will Extended Protection enabled by default and bring support for TLS 1.3. The CU14 and the CU15 planned for September will be released after January 9, 2024, which means that there will be two CUs after the end of mainstream support. Extended support will then end on October 14, 2025, supposedly there will be a new Exchange Server version by then, which will support a direct upgrade for the first time.
Meine persönliche Vermutung ist, dass es sich bei der nächsten Exchange Server Version eher um ein „CU16“ für Exchange 2019 handeln wird, was auch erklären würde, warum zum ersten Mal ein direktes Upgrade unterstützt wird.
Microsoft writes the following about the release of CUs in extended support:
The end of mainstream support is January 9, 2024, which is not the deadline for publishing CUs. January 9, 2024 is the last date by which you can request a bug fix or Design Change Request (DCR) for the Exchange team to consider. We will accept requests for bug fixes and DCRs until January 9. After this date, we will only consider security fixes.
Servicing Exchange Server 2019
As the extended support for Exchange 2016 and 2019 ends on October 14, 2025, Microsoft should actually release the next Exchange Server version in the first half of 2025 (preferably at the beginning of the year) so that there is enough time to migrate from Exchange 2016/2019 to Exchange vNext. The direct upgrade to Exchange vNext is only supported by Exchange Server 2019, and the Windows Server version probably also plays a role here. For Exchange 2016, only the previous migration path remains, which would suggest that Exchange vNext will be released at the beginning of 2025. So far, however, there is nothing new to report.
