Re: SBS Dilemma
From: Jeff Middleton [SBS-MVP] (jeff_at_cfisolutions.com)
Date: 02/06/04
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Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 08:56:35 -0600
I started off agreeing with that article, but by the Recalibration section,
I decided it was the pundit that needs recalibration.
SBS is fine. It's the price of all the rest of MS products that is puke on
SMB purchasing decisions. The friction isn't the 60 user site going to 75
users for technical reasons, it's the dramatic departure of price and
practical reality.
When I was asked the first time what would I think about changing the SBS
seat limit from 50 to 75, my reaction was more "whatever" than anything
else. I move customers to multiple servers at 25 seats if there's backend
applications like Exchange, SQL involved. I don't see it as a cost issue,
it's a sanity issue. You can google this from my past posts. If a server
costs $5000, then at 25 seats, you have $200/seat cost in that server
distributed to 25 staff, and if that upgrade services them for two years,
that 104 weeks. That's $2/wk per user. Somebody going to tell me that
$2/wk/user can't provide better up-time, particularly when you include
service work by the IT staff? Besides, at this point a first server
shouldn't cost that much (other than tape backup costs), it should be be
more like $3000 at most for a second server....except for this problem that
MS is still demanding $1000 for a fileserver license. That's the rediculous
price point
For the Mom and Pop biz, the problem isn't the complexity of the product for
them being "to many features for them to deal with like a big company", it's
that MS doesn't understand how to make any product manageable without
trailing along a dog and pony show in the process...at any scale. Group
Policies are a powerful idea that is to complicated to manage. Reskit tools
are very powerful, but lack the sensible manner to tune the interface you
know, instead you have to learn some different view of what you are trying
to manage. Troubleshooting the convolutions of networked environments
requires far more depth of skill because MS is failing to address elegance
when they look at management. MS isn't getting it done in any product other
than SBS. SBS is, as far as I know, the only product MS has that is getting
a totally independet "efficiency of design and deployment review" within MS.
The SBS dev team takes products from completely different product groups,
pulls them back out of shrink wrap and then goes back to work on taking a
great product and making it efficient and more accessible. SBS is a great
product because MS is doing a Value Add on their own product, and that Value
Add is a sanity check on complexity.
The more years I have spent in this industry, using MS products, and
comparing my experiences from other flagship developers, the more I see MS
products like a virtual ice cream shop assembly line. As Alchin has said, no
feature is ever removed from Office, because even if only 0.001% of the
users need it, you are still talking about at least 100,000 people. (my
stats could be off, it's an illustration). So instead of a product to make
sense for the first time user, we have a product that includes everything
that ever seemed useful to anyone. As such, if you want a banana split, if
MS was running the ice cream shop you would end up with a multi-layered tray
passed through the hands of dozens and dozens of designers, each one adding
another scoop of this, a dab of this decore, more of that sweet treat....and
in the end, your banana split weighs 175 lbs, can't be passed to you without
collapsing and though it may well have banana's in it somewhere, it buried
in excess "might as wells" that someone might request on their sundae treat.
We consumers of MS software have become so accustomed to ignoring features
we don't care about that we just don't even think about why everything we do
has this degree of intimidation. If I need a hammer, I don't need one with
streamers, built in work light, a glued on reference guide to nails, a
global positioning viewer and WMI monitoring of the impact point. I just
want to drive a nail with a hammer. 15 years ago we had software without
unified GUI, but with specific purpose. What was elegant was the products
did a specific job, and were designed by people who understood the end-users
view of doing that job quite well. Most of MS product are now just buried in
"unified GUI" goop that is effectively hiding any sense of what the actual
job is you intend to do with this product. Without the ability to strip away
the chrome, gizmos, extended feature sets and gamer's compatibility options,
it's damn difficult to bring a product to a SMB business owner and imply to
them that "this is a tool designed for exactly what you need, it's call
Microsoft Office". No, that's actually the omnibus history of man's efforts
in business technology, but it's not what _my SMB customer_ is looking for
his business.
SBS is the only MS product trying desperately to meet SMB with containment
of bloat, sanity of price, and concern for the features of doing business in
a small footprint. Short people don't need fewer clothes because they are
smaller people, the need just as many clothes that fit them.
- Next message: IBC: "Re: How To VPN?"
- Previous message: Merv Porter [SBS-MVP]: "Re: VPN vs. IP-addresses"
- In reply to: Jim Behning: "Re: SBS Dilemma"
- Next in thread: Patrick Chefalo: "Re: SBS Dilemma"
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