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from my point of view, this role is not a necessary role in Exchange architecture, it act as a proxy, and there is multiple Proxy and firewalls out there which do this more professional than Edge Transport, so to simplify the Exchange architecture they did this.
I believe some vendors provide this feature more better than MS edge server role in addtition to this we have firewalls and DMZ zones. In exchange2013 they introduced anitspam as built in feature which can be enabled by Exch mgmt shell and this does a quite good job.
Because Microsoft realized that there are3rd party vendors can intelligently provide this role. Obviously, Microsoft responded to the many critics from customers (i am one of them) in2007 when they launched their exchange2007. We (the customers) didn't understand why MS included that role if we can use mail security solutions from vendors that can accomplish this role in more intelligent way. But the response from MS came very late, in2013 ;)
One of the clever mail security solution that i worked with is NetIQ Mail Marshall. It includes robust policies, rules, RegEX rules, and many other features to protect your mail flow.
Microsoft simply a company that needs to work in every aspect in IT to compete with other vendors. However, they discover later that they are not fit for this trend. Take ISA and TMG as an example. Why you think MS quit this line? Because they are not a firewall company. Period.
In fact, i was against ISA/TMG as a software firewall. Always secure your pipelines with hard boxes.
Due to the new architecture of exchange2013 Edge transport server role has been removed from exchange2013. however you can still use previous version edge transport role on perimeter in exchange2013 environment.
You can't enable the anti-spam agents on an Exchange2013 Client Access server. Therefore, the only way to get the Connection Filtering agent is to install an Exchange2010 or Exchange2007 Edge Transport server in the perimeter network.
The function of Edge can be serve by CAS Serve how we still integrate edge Server2010 with Exchange2013. Microsoft has plan to use third party SPAM Flite for security etc, But it is an expensive solution for small organizations. so now Exchange 2013 SP1 has Introduce the Edge Again.
The Edge Transport server is not currently available in Microsoft Exchange Server2013. However, you can continue to use existing Exchange Server2007 or Exchange Server2010 Edge Transport servers that you have deployed in your perimeter network. Or, you can install a new Exchange2007 or Exchange2010 Edge Transport server in your perimeter network for a new or upgraded Exchange2013 organization.
Currently it is available and you can use it and one more thing you can used Edge2010 with Exch2013.
