Re: [News] Nadella to be new Microsoft CEO and Gates kicked off board?
I obviously haven't been dealing with the scale you have, but like I said, the Exchange aspect of Office 365 has been pretty good for me. Roll-out was difficult in some cases and auto-discover was an issue with a few PCs, but not many. Microsoft had better get all this right and I think they will eventually. It bites into their enterprise market in a big way. A fairly typical business that writes letters, processes email, and keeps data updated in databases is finding more and more opportunities in the clouds. A completely non-Microsoft shop while unlikely a few years ago, is becoming more prevalent now. Microsoft is becoming irrelevant in many markets they were basically the only solution for a few years ago. They obviously know they must replace this business. They are just so darned big and heavy, I'm not 100% sure they are capable of this. One of the bigger contenders for the CEO position wanted to break up the company. I think that is a wise idea, but it wasn't for him:)
If I had to run my business off an iPad or Android tablet, it would be possible now. Let's say I wanted to use Microsoft software like Office 365. No problem with the email, but what about Word, Excel, etc. Forget it. Yes they have a version of Office for the iPhone, but there is nothing for the iPad. I have installed the Android version and it is a joke. They are protecting their revenues while at the same time reducing them in the future. It is a shortsightedness that continually seems to afflict that company.
Let me just give you one example locally where Microsoft is becoming irrelevant. Our local MLS system is used by thousands of real estate agents. During the last good number of years they were forced into using a MLS system that would only run with a number of Active-X components installed in IE. I can't tell you how much money I have made dealing with various issues getting those components installed or dealing with IE issues they would naturally face. For years, you couldn't use a Mac or an iPad or Chrome or Firefox. Yes they had work-arounds, but they were bad ones. But this week they finally dumped the system in favor of something much more universal. I haven't gotten my hands on it yet, but my understanding is the system is quite good. Here we had 5000-6000 people in one metropolitan area that were tied to Microsoft with probably 10 thousand or more devices. Now they are as free as birds. Microsoft can kiss a lot of that business goodbye.
Go a little deeper. They don't have any plans to fix the problem for almost 2 weeks. I was looking at that two hours ago. The problem concerns rules and can be worked around using Powershell (which I am not too good at). It has had zero effect on what I do, but I could see an admin going bonkers. But then for a person this bothers there aught to be a decent proficiency in Powershell. Problem solved with time wasted.
Speaking of transport rules. I don't know if you know this but when you buy an Office 365 Business subscription you don't get them. I learned this the hard way. I just got a 4 dollar a month Exchange plan for myself a few months before Rolling it out to an office of about 20 users a few months later. That office had no need for anything but the $4/user plan. Then i needed to implement it in an office with 5 or 6 users some of which would benefit by the Office subscription model. So I signed up for a free trial of office 365 business. I started to poke around exchange and found a lot of features missing that I was used to. The interface was completely different. Big pain canceling that account and figuring out how I could get the Exchange I wanted. I must have talked to 4 ms reps everyone giving me a different answer. Finally got someone that explained it all to me. What I needed was the $4 month enterprise exchange accounts plus an add on for $12 per month that gave you Office. Then you get the transport rules. $1 more per month with no discount for annual payment. Their array of plans, options and sub-options is so dizzying that spin in a centrifuge would seem motionless. That's what happens when you get too big.
Go a little deeper. They don't have any plans to fix the problem for almost 2 weeks. I was looking at that two hours ago. The problem concerns rules and can be worked around using Powershell (which I am not too good at). It has had zero effect on what I do, but I could see an admin going bonkers. But then for a person this bothers there aught to be a decent proficiency in Powershell. Problem solved with time wasted.