Friday, September 12, 2008

Go read "How Linux is keeping Microsoft honest (and why SBS sucks)"

Here's an interesting article from one of our Italian friends.

David Williams points out that Micro$oft's 2008 Server platform is moving away from the traditional MS GUI interface and back towards control by the command line (which is how Linux admins traditionally earn their daily bread). Scripting languages are essential in modern server environments since there's only so much that you can do with point and click. I haven't used the MS Powershell interface and don't want to start, but I must admit that I prefer doing Notes admin by command line.

Part two of his article is where the meat is for the Foundations market. His argument for the historical success of SBS is:

"... you’ll find many a lone consultant who is eager to resell [SBS] and to attain their sales certificate in the product... They lack the fiscal backing to purchase the standard range of Microsoft server products so they hone in on SBS because it’s what they can afford themselves..."

Now here's the selling point for Foundations:

"Yet, SBS comes with a catch. It’s heavily restricted. You cannot have another SBS server on your network, for one thing. And while you can have other Windows Servers – using the full product – none of them can be domain controllers. Your total user count is restricted.

This may sound acceptable; you have a reduced cost setup with the trade-off of some limitations. However, it’s exasperating, to be honest. SBS is much more restrictive than businesses realise. Even if it suits today, it’s almost certain it won’t tomorrow. It absolutely offers no scalability and any organisation which intends to grow is heading off on the wrong path by using it."


Our problem lies in getting customers to recognize these limitations before they send their money to Micro$oft.
.

1 comment:

NotesTracker - Tony Austin said...

Graham, FYI David Williams is actually based in Newcastle (NSW, that is) not Italy.

He writes extensively for iTWire and you'll find the original of this article there. David has written a lot of articles about Linux (mainly, versus Windows).

By the way, I also write for iTWire, and being a Notes devotee these include some articles on Lotus Notes and other IBM topics, see A Meaningful Look as well as my own blogs of course, such as Notes Tone Unturned

Cheers, Tony Austin.