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Challenges To Microsoft For 2006
TekkenLaw writes "Directions on Microsoft, a site which claims to be 'the only independent organization in the world devoted exclusively to tracking Microsoft', has published a list of 10 challenges for 2006 for Microsoft as a company. Top strategic issues in all areas of operation from OS to gaming are covered." From the article: "Windows Vista could offer large organizations improvements in software development, security, reliability, systems management, and user interface. However, public demonstrations have been full of cool graphics effects and consumer features that probably turn off more IT staff than they attract, and sales of Windows upgrade rights to corporations have been disappointing. In 2006, Microsoft has to settle on a feature set for Vista that appeals to enterprises, explain clearly what that feature set is, and reveal what PC hardware and other infrastructure corporations require to reap the benefits." Actually presented in a fairly respectful way, it's interesting to see the overall picture we've reported on for the past year condensed down into one page.
I would add to the list, cut down on the number of different versions of Vista. If they don't Windows will be more fractured than the number of distributions of *BSD and Linux on x86.
Ok so I exaggerate a little bit. There are hundreds of distributions, but I think there are less than 6 major distributions that have significant desktop share.
Think Deeply.
Oh well. If a country's citizens think 'bipartisan' and 'independent' are the same thing, who am I to complain that the concept of independence has slipped a little?
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
They still have 85%+ market share. And it's still installed by default in every Windows install. They may loose a few percent here or there, but as long as they make their browser the fastest in the next release of Windows they won't have to do anything else to fight for market share. You give users too much credit.
Developers: We can use your help.
Hey, rework the APIs all you want, if you think that's what stands between developers and quality applications. If you're talking about the behind-the-APIs code, change all that too since it shouldn't affect developers or users. No matter what, though, all the old APIs have to stay there for compat reasons.
The changes to the user interface really grind my gears. No, not the transparency and cooler icons, I don't really care about those one way or another because I can turn them off. Vista has moved a lot of the common tasks around for reasons that make no sense. It's harder to find most system settings because they are several clicks deeper in the UI. Who does this benefit? It's not better for experts, who already had figured out the old locations whether they made sense or not. It's not better for Grandma, who *still* can't find or change any settings; now her brainy grandson can't help her either. It's not better for new users--are there any new Windows users anymore?
I think Microsoft has fallen down by focusing too much on corporate America.
Corps and individuals want different things from their apps, and they even want different apps in many cases. Corps want everything to be centrally installable, configurable, and controllable by their IT dept to conform to company policy. In the individual case, the only centrally controlled PCs are the 0wned ones hacked by some eastern European crime cartel.
Look at it through the lens of a corp-focused company, though, and there is an opportunity. Many individuals want their PCs to be managed by someone else, either to save the hassle or because they don't know what they're doing. What if Microsoft was the central manager? You'd have to feed them a LOT of data about what was going on in your PC, just like IT management. And you'd have to pay them a maintenance fee. Basically that's what is going on with Windows OneCare.
One quick google search using "outlook calendaring open source" yielded this among other items: http://openconnector.org/
Have you USED openconnector before? It's in early Alpha, and requires a whole lot more than Sendmail (as the original poster mentioned, but hey, it's Microsoft bashing, so it's OK not to read the OP right?)
Who needs to resurrect messages from a corrupt data store?
I've been managing Exchange since 5.0. I can count the number of times I've had to rescue anything from a corrupt data store on two fingers (in 12 years). Each time only took a few minutes cause I was intelligent enough to follow standard/best practices.
Who needs to figure out how to keep the mail server running once you've filled the disks with a massive file that you can't move to a larger disk (because it's being accessed)?
Again, if one were to follow standard best practices, this ISN'T an issue. It's also readily apparent you've never used Exchange before, because moving mailboxes is simple. VERY simple. Move to a new storage group, or even a new server with a couple of mouse clicks. Yes it is that easy. Again, hell it's bashing Microsoft, so don't let little things like the truth get in your way m'kay?
Who needs to figure out why people intermittently can't connect to the Exchange server anymore when all the licenses are used?
Licensing is part of the Microsoft world, it's not that difficult. Nor does it take much time. Most companies that use MS products know how licensing work...
Who wants to figure out how to upgrade from SBS to an even more expensive version of Exchange (only to find out that you can't "upgrade")?
You know how easy it is to add new Exchange servers to an SBS Exchange environment? Very. Buy a new copy of Exchange an add to the SBS Exchange org.
Exchange is a fine product for some limited settings. For the rest of us, there are feature-for-feature open source alternatives that will work with Outhouse. They don't entail rediculous licensing problems inherent in Exchange and are engineered better.
If that really was the case, why are not more people moving to them...