September 3, 2008
08:26 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
I was reminded again today why Microsoft as a company frustrates so many of its own customers and why standing up and being accountable for your actions is key. Disclaimer (I used to work for Microsoft). Disclaimer 2 (I'm a current volume license customer of Microsoft) so I'm horribly conflicted.
Microsoft as any good company will do, decided to innovate its product set. It recently launched Windows Server 2008 and in doing so it deprecated a feature that has existed since NT4 (read: a long freaking time ago). The tech details are boring: it used to support some functionality critical to exchange backup and it now doesn't.
What is more interesting is the MS Employee response. I was linked to the MS Employee's blog (Scott Schnoll) about the lack of support. Here is the money quote:
"... for reasons outside the control of the Windows or the Exchange team, the out-of-box-experience of Windows Server 2008 did not include the support for backing up and recovering Exchange.
Pasted from <https://blogs.technet.com/scottschnoll/archive/2008/06/15/back-from-teched-it-pro-north-america-2008.aspx>
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For reasons outside of the control of the two major teams involved in the previous working functionality it got removed from the product. Now THAT is accountability.
Further finger pointing happens on the very next sentence : "
Both the Windows and the Exchange team heard a lot of feedback and criticism over a decision that neither team was responsible for.
Pasted from <https://blogs.technet.com/scottschnoll/archive/2008/06/15/back-from-teched-it-pro-north-america-2008.aspx>
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I'm really not sure what is worse, the childish finger pointing or the thought that product design decisions are made outside of the two largest stakeholders in the project.
As a customer this is why I can't trust Microsoft. Neither team will stand and say hey we messed up and we own helping you as a customer get a solution. On the upside they did fix the issue after a number of customers complained and wouldn't let it die. I as your customer should not have to scream obscenities at you to redeliver functionality you have always had. I don't really care why and I most certainly don't care to see people within your company pointing fingers at each other as to why it happened in the first place.
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August 13, 2008
04:03 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
A good deal of what we have to pay for to run our company's infrastructure is based on volume. We pay for the volume or capacity of internet bandwidth we have. We pay for the number of physical phone lines we have coming into our building. We pay rates on all the credit card transactions we do based on volume.
As a business consumer I want and need these types of pricing models. If I need more bandwidth to host streaming video I'm happy to pay for it to ensure that my customers have a good experience when they are using our websites. I know that I can adjust our costs up and down based on the volume of a service we require as a business. This is nice because I only pay for what I am using, nothing more nothing less.
As a technologist, I know that the services I buy cost the service providers to manage. If I buy more phone lines, the phone company needs to install more physical circuits. If I buy more bandwidth the service provider has to either purchase more bandwidth to cover my allocation or have less to sell to other customers. In the end I know that my volume purchasing decision has real cost impacts to the vendors which is why they offer volume based pricing in the first place to ensure that they stay profitable when demand goes up or down.
I am working with a vendor that has sold us a product with a volume based pricing plan. This is a software vendor and we are running into an issue where the actual volume we need may drastically overrun our initial budgets. Our bad for sure.
The problem I have is that there is no additional cost associated with the increase in volume to the vendor. It is a self-hosted program, on our servers using our bandwidth and nothing is getting transferred to the vendor. There is no change in their cost if we process 1 item through their system or 1 million. The cost is all contained on our end support their software.
Is there anywhere else in the technology industry that this sort of behavior is acceptable?
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February 11, 2008
08:53 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
I always like to kick off a new blog with a provocative post. I believe Open Source will always lose. To prove my theory I point you to the below diagram of linux distributions from 1991-2007. What percentage of the PC market do you think each distribution could dream to achieve in the products short lifespan?
Its not that I don't like Open Source or the ideas around it, its just that I think its destined to be an acedemic exercise. Users use computers because of great software. Great software is built by companies looking to profit from their hard work. Commercial software companies want their users to have a great, consistant experience. "Hello" to the monolith know as Windows, and "Sorry we didn't get more time together" for the 67 versions of Linux.
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February 11, 2008
08:40 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
I read an article in Computerworld this week that talks about our governments plans to use technology to advance the science of guessing. Yes, our tax dollars today are being used to develop systems that will attempt to predetermine your course of action in life. Terrorist or Tourist? Project Hostile Intent is reported to exist to "build systems that automatically identify and analyze behavioral and physiological cues associated with deception."
Is this really the best use of our tax dollars? The best part is that you and I will some day be able to say we are paying for our own misery. Where exactly does this line of thinking end? Are the events depicted in the Minority Report movie really that far off?
I for one, can't wait.
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