Update: Per request, added SharePoint and OneDrive, and did some manual corrections.
A really short post on a Ugly Sweater background with Exchange, Teams and Outlook theme to use during those conference calls end of December. Enjoy!
Like it or not, leave feedback in the comments. Also, suggestions are welcomed. In case you are not aware, I keep a set of custom background for you to enjoy here.
With great honor and joy I can announce that I have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award for the seventh consecutive year, again in the category Office Apps & Services. Congratulations to other new and re-awarded MVPs as well, and kudos to the MVP program in undertaking the monstrous task of reviewing and evaluating thousands of contributions every award cycle.
With another award cycle also comes the time to have a look at the MVP statistics. Below numbers are taken from the public MVP site. July 3rd is chosen as the first days the site gets updated and new awardees need to turn in their NDA before they show up on the site.
Because people can get awarded each month, the comparison to July 3rd of every year indicates only yearly trend. Therefor we’ll also compare the numbers to those of June to see the impact on long-term MVP population, as awardees from January are only up for consideration in July 2021 for example.
From the numbers, it is clear that this cycle the number of MVPs went a bit down from 2.998 in June 2020 to 2.850 now (-5%), but it is higher than the 2.634 (+8%) of July 2019.
The following table contains the changes per award category from July 2019 and June 2020 to July 2020. I will leave the interpretation up to you.
| Expertise | July 2019 | June 2020 | Change | July 2020 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud and Datacenter Management | 232 | 242 | 4% | 209 | -10% |
| Microsoft Azure | 409 | 455 | 11% | 463 | 13% |
| Office Apps & Services | 491 | 530 | 8% | 512 | 4% |
| Business Applications | 166 | 234 | 41% | 240 | 45% |
| Data Platform | 332 | 375 | 13% | 358 | 8% |
| Developer Technologies | 644 | 742 | 15% | 697 | 8% |
| Enterprise Mobility | 106 | 119 | 12% | 113 | 7% |
| AI | 84 | 109 | 30% | 122 | 45% |
| Office Development | 47 | 60 | 28% | 64 | 36% |
| Windows Development | 119 | 123 | 3% | 110 | -8% |
| Windows and Devices for IT | 57 | 55 | -4% | 43 | -25% |
| Total Awards | 2687 | 3044 | 13% | 2931 | 9% |
| Total MVPs | 2634 | 2998 | 14% | 2849 | 8% |
Note: The total number of MVPs doesn’t equal the total number of awardees, as MVPs can be awarded in more than one category; there are now 82 people awarded in multiple categories’; an increase of 57% compared to June 2019.
When zooming in on the Office Apps & Services category, the awards per country are shown below, including change compared to last year. Be advised that 26 OAS MVPs are anonymous or have profiles without information on residency.
| Country | Number | Country | Number | Country | Number |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 24 (20%) | India | 13 (0%) | Saudi Arabia | 1 (0%) |
| Austria | 3 (0%) | Ireland | 1 (0%) | Serbia | 1 (0%) |
| Belgium | 5 (-38%) | Israel | 1 (0%) | Singapore | 3 (0%) |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 1 (0%) | Italy | 5 (-17%) | Slovakia | 1 (0%) |
| Brazil | 8 (-20%) | Japan | 20 (-10%) | Slovenia | 2 (0%) |
| Bulgaria | 2 (0%) | Korea | 12 (0%) | South Africa | 4 (-20%) |
| Cambodia | 1 (100%) | Luxembourg | 1 (100%) | Spain | 12 (50%) |
| Canada | 33 (6%) | Macedonia, FYRO | 2 (0%) | Sri Lanka | 1 (0%) |
| China | 17 (6%) | Malaysia | 1 (0%) | Sweden | 9 (80%) |
| Colombia | 5 (25%) | Mexico | 5 (0%) | Switzerland | 3 (50%) |
| Croatia | 5 (25%) | Myanmar | 1 (100%) | Taiwan | 4 (0%) |
| Czech Republic | 2 (0%) | Nepal | 1 (0%) | Thailand | 2 (-34%) |
| Denmark | 6 (0%) | New Zealand | 6 (0%) | The Netherlands | 22 (4%) |
| Egypt | 1 (0%) | Nigeria | 2 (100%) | Turkey | 2 (0%) |
| El Salvador | 1 (0%) | Norway | 6 (0%) | Ukraine | 2 (0%) |
| Finland | 4 (33%) | Pakistan | 1 (-50%) | United Arab Emirates | 1 (-50%) |
| France | 18 (-10%) | Poland | 6 (50%) | United Kingdom | 33 (17%) |
| Germany | 24 (-4%) | Portugal | 3 (50%) | United States | 123 (2%) |
| Hungary | 2 (0%) | Russia | 9 (12%) | Uruguay | 1 (0%) |
And last, the number of Office Apps & Services and total number of MVP’s over the last years, before and after the award cycle.
| June 2017 | July 2017 | June 2018 | July 2018 | March 2019 | July 2019 | June 2020 | July 2020 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OSS | 532 | 449 | 490 | 383 | 622 | 491 | 530 | 512 |
| -16% | 9% | -22% | 62% | -21% | 8% | -3% | ||
| Total | 4134 | 3490 | 3815 | 3030 | 3205 | 2634 | 2998 | 2849 |
| -16% | 9% | -21% | 6% | -18% | 14% | -5% |
On a final note, the above data is static; some MVPs have build great dashboards which allow you to work with the data more interactively (if they have updated their data set, that is). Some noteworthy mentions:
If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments below.
A quick blog on recently published security updates for Exchange Server 2013 up to Exchange Server 2019. These fixes address the following vulnerabilities:
The CVE documents contain more details on the vulnerabilities. The exploits can be fixed by single security update, which you can find in the table below per current Exchange version.
| Exchange | Download | Build | KB | Supersedes |
| Exchange 2019 CU3 | Download | 15.2.464.7 | KB4523171 | KB4515832 |
| Exchange 2019 CU2 | Download | 15.2.397.9 | KB4523171 | KB4515832 |
| Exchange 2016 CU14 | Download | 15.1.1847.5 | KB4523171 | KB4515832 |
| Exchange 2016 CU13 | Download | 15.1.1779.7 | KB4523171 | KB4515832 |
| Exchange 2013 CU23 | Download | 15.0.1497.4 | KB4523171 | KB4509409 |
Be advised that the Security Updates for Exchange 2013-2019 are Cumulative Update level specific. Unfortunately, the security update carries the same name for different CUs, and you cannot apply the update for Exchange 2016 CU14 to Exchange 2016 CU13. I would suggest tagging the Cumulative Update in the file name when you store it, e.g. Exchange2016-CU14-KB4523171-x64-en.msp.
As with any patch or update, I’d recommend to apply this in a acceptance environment first, prior to implementing it in production.
Today, the Exchange Team released the quarterly Cumulative Updates for Exchange Server 2019 as well as Exchange 2016. The fixes in each release, product downloads are described below:
| Version | Build | KB | Download | UMLP | Schema |
| Exchange 2019 CU3 | 15.2.464.5 | KB4514141 | VLSC | N | |
| Exchange 2016 CU14 | 15.1.1847.3 | KB4514140 | Download | UMLP | N |
Exchange 2019 CU3 fixes:
Exchange 2016 CU14 fixes:
Notes:
Caution:
As for any update, I recommend to thoroughly test updates in a test environment prior to implementing them in production. When you lack such facilities, hold out a few days and monitor the comments on the original publication or forums for any issues.
Update: Updated statistics based on award categories (not people) due to the number of multi-category awardees.
In previous years, I performed some comparisons on the MVP population after every award cycle. So, time to get some fresh statistics after July 2019 award cycle.
For comparison, I had a look at the public MVP statistics of July 3rd, 2018 against those of July 3rd, 2019, as the public MVP site was closed the first two days. From the numbers, it is clear that this cycle the number of MVPs went down again, from 3.030 last year, to 2.634 now (-13%).
The following table contains the changes per award category from July 2018 to
July 2019:
| Competence | Jul-18 | Jul-19 | Change |
| AI | 58 | 84 | 45% |
| Business Applications | 164 | 166 | 0% |
| Cloud and Datacenter Management | 303 | 232 | -23% |
| Data Platform | 369 | 332 | -10% |
| Enterprise Mobility | 122 | 106 | -13% |
| Microsoft Azure | 444 | 409 | -8% |
| Office Development | 33 | 47 | 42% |
| Office Apps & Services | 606 | 491 | -19% |
| Developer Technologies | 781 | 644 | -17% |
| Windows and Devices for IT | 87 | 57 | -34% |
| Windows Development | 186 | 119 | -37% |
| Total MVPs | 3066 | 2634 | -14% |
Few notes:
When zooming in on the Office Apps & Services category, the awards per country are shown below. Be advised that 26 are anonymous MVP’s or have profiles without location.
| Country | Jul’18 | Jul’19 | Country | Jul’18 | Jul’19 | Country | Jul’18 | Jul’19 |
| ARE | 1 | 2 | GBR | 23 | 28 | POL | 2 | 4 |
| AUS | 17 | 20 | HRV | 5 | 4 | PRK | 6 | 12 |
| AUT | 2 | 3 | HUN | 2 | 2 | PRT | 3 | 2 |
| BEL | 8 | 8 | IND | 12 | 13 | RUS | 5 | 8 |
| BGR | 1 | 2 | IRL | 1 | 1 | SAU | 1 | 1 |
| BIH | 1 | 1 | ISR | 1 | SGP | 3 | 3 | |
| BRA | 2 | 10 | ITA | 8 | 6 | SLV | 1 | |
| CAN | 28 | 31 | JOR | 1 | 1 | SRB | 1 | 1 |
| CHE | 4 | 2 | JPN | 11 | 22 | SVK | 1 | 1 |
| CHN | 14 | 16 | LKA | 4 | 1 | SVN | 1 | 2 |
| COL | 2 | 4 | MEX | 2 | 5 | SWE | 6 | 5 |
| CRI | 1 | MKD | 2 | 2 | THA | 1 | 3 | |
| CZE | 3 | 2 | MYS | 1 | 1 | TUR | 4 | 2 |
| DEU | 17 | 25 | NGA | 1 | 1 | TWN | 3 | |
| DNK | 2 | 6 | NLD | 13 | 21 | UKR | 1 | 2 |
| EGY | 1 | 1 | NOR | 5 | 6 | URY | 1 | 1 |
| ESP | 5 | 8 | NPL | 1 | 1 | USA | 89 | 120 |
| FIN | 2 | 3 | NZL | 4 | 6 | ZAF | 4 | 5 |
| FRA | 16 | 20 | PAK | 2 | 2 |
The countries Argentina, Chile, Latvia, Peru, Romania and Greece are no longer represented in the Office Apps & Services category, while Costa Rica, Israel, Taiwan and El Salvador are new to the table.
| Month | Oct 2016 | Jan 2017 | Jun 2017 | Jul 2017 | Jun 2018 | Jul 2018 | Mar 2019 | Jul 2019 |
| OSS | 538 | 505 (-7%) | 532 (+5%) | 449 (-16%) | 490 (+2%) | 383 (-21%) | 622 (+62%) | 491 (-22%) |
| Total | N/A | N/A | 4134 | 3490 (-16%) | 3815 (+2%) | 3030 (-21%) | 3205 (+6%) | 2635 (-18%) |
Above are the number of Office Apps & Services and total number of MVP’s over the last years. Do note that for March and July 2019 the former product categories are included in the Office Apps & Services category, hence why I included March to have a sense of the changes in the July cycle.
If you have questions or comments, please send them in the comments below.
EighTwOne (821) 