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>

"

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>

"

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.