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Javier Soltero: The Outsider Microsoft Tapped To Reinvent Outlook (windowsitpro.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the new-blood dept.

v3rgEz writes: In a wide ranging interview, IT Pro talks with Microsoft's Javier Soltero about his plans to help Redmond get its groove back when it comes to email, walking a fine line between keeping traditional Outlook users (and IT administrators) happy while radically reworking software that hasn't seen a huge shakeup since 2003.

5 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Really? by DanJ_UK · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Outlook isn't the fucking problem, exchange and its bastardised architecture is.

    To this day I cannot fathom why companies would ever roll out a proprietary exchange setup when there are better solutions available, at a significantly lower cost. Solutions that are more reliable, more secure and better supported cross platform.

    --
    - Dan
    1. Re:Really? by chipschap · · Score: 3, Interesting

      To be fair, there are FOSS solutions that do these things on a local/group basis. There's lots of groupware that provides most of these functions.

      But I do have to admit that Microsoft has the whole stack, if you want to buy into it and pay the price. I don't agree that the individual elements of the stack are anything like best in class, but the integration is definitely there, and it's scalable beyond most FOSS groupware (at least as far as I know the market).

    2. Re:Really? by swb · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'd argue that Microsoft wants it that way. I've installed and run Exchange since 2000 and by 2010 Microsoft mostly hit the sweet spot in terms of useful management interface and pretty damn good reliability and performance, especially for the large feature set it employed.

      But in 2010, they killed off the GUI management for a web interface that maybe does half of what even small organizations need in terms of admin, shunting the rest of their management intrerface to the overly verbose and Byzantine PowerShell. It's like running Postfix but using a line editor to manage the config file.

      Worse, they made it less reliable and resilient and I've had Microsoft SEs tell me the same thing.

      My (conspiratorial) belief is that MS made it worse to manage in a deliberate attempt to drive SMBs to O365 and jack up cash flow through a more expensive and continuous billing cycle. We've priced out O365 vs. on premise installations and head counts beyond about 20 people are cheaper over 3-5 years for on premise than O365. Exactly none of the clients who have gone O365 have dropped IT staff from what I've seen.

      And it's not like there aren't outages and downtime associated with O365, probably statistically more than 2010 or 2013 installs I've seen.

      I'm sure that some large organizations have found the increased PowerShell aspect of Exchange management useful, but these are the kind of IT shops with relatively large groups of dedicated Exchange teams anyway -- they have the time and headcount to make all that scripting worthwhile.

  2. Re:Sigh by Slick_W1lly · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So.. great. Now this guy can go into the same bin as that dude who pushed systemd. The 'Clusterfuck of Things I didn't want..."

    2003 outlook was the last I actually liked. I hung onto it for as long as I possibly could before being forced to upgrade to.. I dunno.. whatever it is out there now. It had a reasonably nice UI, it was quick and did a bunch of stuff I liked. The UI wasn't splattered all over the place and it had nice bevelled buttons and stuff, instead of the flat bollocks that is the current trend. I mean, I have what.. three choices of 'theme' now? White, 'light grey' and 'dark grey' - none of which are much use in allowing me to distinguish between parts of the interface..

    So.. now I know who to blame. .

  3. Re:just go ahead and call it ReInvent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Please don't. It's hard to think of a more bloated resource hog, far too much for what it is supposed to do, and yet still lacking in basic features in other areas.

    I despise Exchange, all the more because I have been so long forced to administer it (since the Exchange 97 days).

    As a user, I newer appreciated Exchange+Outlook before I moved to a different company that use Google Apps instead. There might be better alternatives than both of them, but right now I miss Exchange+Outlook so f'ing much.