The identifiable conversation behind this retrospective is Tony Redmond’s interview with Microsoft Exchange corporate vice president Perry Clarke, published December 17, 2013. It covered Exchange quality, Microsoft’s cloud strategy, continued on-premises development, and mobile access. The title’s “Two Years On” framing is not verified: no distinct two-years-later follow-up was located, so the safest account is of what the 2013 interview actually records.
What conversation can be identified?
ITPro Today published “Talking Exchange Server with Microsoft’s Perry Clarke” on December 17, 2013. Journalist Tony Redmond described a discussion with Clarke about Exchange’s state at the time, the shift toward cloud services, the future of on-premises software, and mobility.
Redmond explained how to read the article: “Direct quotes from Perry are shown within quotation marks. The rest of the text is my interpretation of what Perry said (and my attempt to put it all into a logical order).” That distinction matters. The interview is a record of Clarke’s views as presented by Redmond, not a transcript in which every paragraph should be treated as Clarke’s verbatim statement.
What did Clarke say about Exchange quality and updates?
As Redmond recounted the conversation, Clarke argued that a shared code base served both Exchange deployed by customers and Office 365. In that account, operating Exchange as a cloud service let Microsoft expose new code to real-world workloads at scale before relevant functionality reached on-premises customers.
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The interview also reflects the tension around that approach. Regressions, interoperability with customer-specific environments, and the time organizations needed to adopt major releases were part of the discussion. Those points capture a 2013 debate about quality and servicing; they do not establish how Microsoft releases or supports Exchange today.
Was Microsoft planning to move Exchange entirely to the cloud?
Clarke’s position in the 2013 interview, as Redmond presented it, was that Microsoft had chosen to develop Exchange for both cloud and on-premises use. The conversation acknowledged that customers had different reasons to keep systems on-premises, even as more organizations considered cloud services.
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This is evidence of Microsoft’s stated direction at that time, not a current deployment recommendation or a guarantee about later product plans. The interview’s cloud-versus-local contrast is historical: it describes Microsoft’s then-current argument for evolving both approaches, alongside customers’ varied requirements.
What role did mobile access play?
The discussion also addressed access to email on mobile devices and Exchange ActiveSync. Clarke credited the protocol ecosystem with helping make Exchange connectivity practical on mobile devices. That is his attributed historical view, not a measured finding that the protocol alone caused mobile adoption.
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Is there a verified “Two Years On” follow-up?
The available identification supports the December 2013 interview, but not a separate article published two years later under the supplied framing. A later reference in Office 365 for IT Pros, updated in April 2026, mentions Clarke’s career and reports an elevation to executive vice president; it does not independently verify a 2015 follow-up or establish his current title. See Office 365 for IT Pros. Accordingly, the two-year framing should be treated as unconfirmed rather than as a documented sequel.
Read as a historical snapshot, the interview is useful for understanding how Microsoft described the relationship between shared cloud development, local Exchange deployments, and mobile connectivity in 2013. It should not be used in place of current product documentation for release, support, or deployment decisions.
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