Windows Server

Scott · Guest

sure, they can stick with exchange 2000 if they wanted to, or keep a license
for both which would be about the same cost roughly as exchange and LCS -
point was, they removed a feature of the server and now charge for it. I get
the whole "it's better" deal..but for those of us that didn't give a rats
butt about federation etc it costs us more for zero added benefit for our
use. Why not just leave the implementation the 4 man dev team did with
messenger in exchange 2000 in exchange 2003? Why'd they have to ditch it
completely, just because of LCS? Nope, that's not the reason, it's because
they could make more money this way pure and simple.

"Jeremy Buch" <jbuch@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:%23jGwxCR1FHA.3660@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...

Scott · Guest

"MS sells SA as assurance we'll always have the latest and greatest
functionality but there is a growing trend of product splitting where the
latest advances require purchase of a separate product"

Bingo! and THAT is what I'm talking about! If you want to branch off
messenger from exchange, this from that etc fine, but for licensed customers
with SA the SA portion of the license SHOULD allow them to use the brand
spanking new product as well at no extra charge when the technology they
have licensed under SA no longer contains X functionality because it was
split off into a new product.

"Trevor Miller" <tmiller@iqep.com.nospam> wrote in message
news:uYU1zeY1FHA.3896@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...

Scott · Guest

"MS sells SA as assurance we'll always have the latest and greatest
functionality but there is a growing trend of product splitting where the
latest advances require purchase of a separate product"

Bingo! and THAT is what I'm talking about! If you want to branch off
messenger from exchange, this from that etc fine, but for licensed customers
with SA the SA portion of the license SHOULD allow them to use the brand
spanking new product as well at no extra charge when the technology they
have licensed under SA no longer contains X functionality because it was
split off into a new product.

"Jeremy Buch" <jbuch@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:eRUVC9Q1FHA.3504@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...

Scott · Guest

just to clarify, the functionality splitting that is constantly occuring
over there at MS these days makes SA completely and totally WORTHLESS MS is
acting like SA is only SA for the CORE functionality of the product, and
their customers see it FAR differently. If we purchased Exchange 2000 under
the SIGNIFICANT EXTRA COST of SA and we use the messenger feature we should
damn well still have the messenger functionality in future versions OR have
the LCS license ADDED free of charge by Microsoft to our SA to make up for
that product split...otherwise "Software Assurance" is completely worthless.

"Scott" <sdgmcdon@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:OJwQnAc1FHA.2704@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...

Trevor Miller · Guest

Agreed and back at you. At the core here I think is that MS sold us the
theory that SA would allow them more frequent product updates so that they
wouldn't need to bundle huge new packages. Well, we bought into it and
we're still lucky if we see a major revision three years after the initial
one. Granted, LCS (so far) is being pretty good with that but how about SQL
and SMS?

I think SA is a decent idea but give us more frequent, smaller releases,
bundle up functional service packs. Only give away security fixes for free.
With more people buying into SA to get the SPs then lower the SA cost.

-trevor

"Scott" <sdgmcdon@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:eKJRDEc1FHA.3124@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...

Jeremy Buch · Guest

The problem here is that as functionality grows, it costs more to develop -
Exchange IM was a 4-man dev crew and now LCS is an order of magnitude more
in terms of work. These costs have to be assumed or we can't do the work we
do - this means that when orders of magnitude in development costs occur and
orders of magnitude in functionality (security, reliability, connectivity,
UI, phone control, etc) occur, we will have to charge for it. We could
certainly have left Exchange IM in the box and done nothing more in this
space, but this isn't what customers asked for. They wanted more
functionality and said they were willing to pay for it - this is only part
of the reason we've gone in the direction we did. The other reasons are
that the separate license for LCS now offers access to LCS and its future
direction as functionality is added. The only reason PIC has any additional
costs is that the providers themselves introduced this fixed cost - not MS.
I understand that it is difficult when a product line ends and a new one
begins that picks up from the old (please see my discussion of this above in
answer to Scott's post for more information on this decision). However,
when radically new functionality is required by the customer, they are
willing to pay for a radical push in development for growth in this area and
the old product line isn't meeting their needs, we worked to find a way to
make our bottom line and provide the functionality in a time-frame that
customers wanted.

Keep in mind that I'm not a business person, so my language and explanation
won't be as clear as they would be otherwise - I mention this here, though,
to help provide insight into what has happened. It isn't money-grubbing -
it literally was the only way to provide for the costs for the new
functionality that customers wanted and it was confirmed with many customers
in the past that they would be willing to pay for significant enhancements
in this space - so we moved ahead with radically advanced development in
this area.

--
Jeremy Buch (Microsoft)

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please do not send email to this address, post a reply to this newsgroup.

"Scott" <sdgmcdon@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:%23npQhAc1FHA.3568@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...

Jeremy Buch · Guest

Please see above for an answer (at least for LCS and Exchange IM) in this
area.

--
Jeremy Buch (Microsoft)

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please do not send email to this address, post a reply to this newsgroup.

"Trevor Miller" <tmiller@iqep.com.nospam> wrote in message
news:%23ORnjOl1FHA.908@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...

Jeremy Buch · Guest

Keep your eyes open for our short-term release that will be a significant
update by assuming much of the functionality provided by ECS in a way that
is much friendlier on your network infrastructure.

--
Jeremy Buch (Microsoft)

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please do not send email to this address, post a reply to this newsgroup.

"Trevor Miller" <tmiller@iqep.com.nospam> wrote in message
news:OER1fxX1FHA.4064@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...

Jeremy Buch · Guest

The reason is that the cost for me to continue to support Exchange IM as
Exchange continues to change (setup, AD settings, etc) was too painful, so
we took the lump for having ever introduced it and just offered people free
transition to LCS 2003. The number of customers (and end-users) who needed
Exchange IM for their business were focused on reliability, scale, security,
supportability and functionality - all of them were happy to see LCS come
around and offer these features in a more robust way. The only customers
who were sticking with Exchange IM were customers (in general) who were
delaying their updates to LCS due to timing, or customers who didn't really
want a robust system and were leveraging ExchIM as a simple tool they could
use on a reasonably secure network for some simple functionality. I
understand that these customers (as you mention) are interrupted in their
ability to keep using a simple tool. However, this wasn't the mainline case
for our customers and the cost for me to continue to support Exchange IM
when most customers wanted LCS anyway wasn't reasonable - especially because
having the two products confused people because they did the same thing.
This isn't a question of greed, it was mostly a question of making things
clear, doing what our customers wanted and not continuing to support
deprecated functionality in light of LCS. We focused on giving Exchange
customers access to LCS 2003 for free when we started this process to ensure
that they had a roadmap they could work with.

Hopefully this helps explain why we are where we are today - this was a
tough decision for the reasons you mentioned, but I believe we made the
right choice in offering the best support for our customers and keeping our
costs lower while giving them what they wanted.

--
Jeremy Buch (Microsoft)

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please do not send email to this address, post a reply to this newsgroup.

"Scott" <sdgmcdon@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:exOAV7b1FHA.3188@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...

Trevor Miller · Guest

Good info all around Jeremy, the only criticism is speed of development.
While I know one just can't through resources at development effort for
speed, the mainstream functionality from the end-user perspective hasn't
progressed all that much. The two things I hear from my users are:

-Multi-end point video and
-Application sharing with multi-monitor

From a mgmt perspective I'd like to see better VoIP support for SMB's but I
think primarily this lies with 3rd party service providers doing SIP based
PBX in the SMB market.

-trevor

"Jeremy Buch" <jbuch@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:OLci1Nm2FHA.744@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...

Trevor Miller · Guest

I agree, my gripes with SA in the area are certainly not software based,
they are business decisions. If you sell SA under the guise that you will
be covered for future versions and enhanced functionality you then need to
honor that. If you have too many unknowns and feel development will be very
expensive then offer SA with different parameters or charge more for it.
I'm sure some finance person sat down looking at all the revenue lost with
the free initial migratory licenses from Exchange and made the decision to
split off PIC into a "new" product.

-trevor

"Jeremy Buch" <jbuch@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:uV8MWSm2FHA.1576@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...

Communicator - LESS FEATURES??? Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3 Next