This work is dedicated to my son Federico and to my wife Antonella. You have made me stronger, better, and more fulfilled than I could have ever imagined.

I want to thank all the people at Packt Publishing for giving me the opportunity to write this book, and for all their great work on the long road from drafting to publishing.

I would like to express my gratitude to Susan S. Bradley (Senior Project Manager at Microsoft), to Johan Veldhuis (Exchange MVP), and to Wang wei (Lync MVP) for their help and support.

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the people at Gruppo Need (http://www.grupponeed.it/) for their incredible assistance, allowing me to use the hardware, infrastructure, and tech support from the labs I used during the preparation of the book, for free.