At Microsoft, we're encouraged to try as much as we can of our fellow teams products, even if it doesn't directly relate to our working area. Admittedly most people don't need encouragement to try new things. :)
One of our newest products is Windows Live One Care. Some folks have been wondering if it works in SBS environments. Of course it does! I'm actually running it on my client at work, which is joined to our server, and low and behold, I have the green check.
I was able to use or disable the client backup (I disabled it because everything on that client is re-directed to the server and it would have been redundant). My firewall is up and running and my automatic updates (provided to me by WSUS) show nothing but a green check.
So have fun, check it out and enjoy the safety!
2 comments:
Sean, what are your thoughts on Onecare possibly taking business away from SMB Network Consultants who monitor, patch, and update their customer's networks and rely on that for income? It's kinda scary for some.
Great question Rich. Thinking back to the older days (pre patching). I know it's hard, we had Value Added Partners and Value Added Resellers. Through the past 5-8 years, these partners have been forced to spend the majority of their time patching and monitoring all types of systems. Those very systems are finally improving enough where they don't need as much care and feeding (or rather they do it themselves). This free's up the VAP/VAR to go back to what they did years ago. Customize a generic solution for a specific customer need.
Yes, actually providing Value! No more mindless patching, no more mindless monitoring and doing the same thing on each system, over and over and over again.
Now VAPs/VARs are free to customize sharepoint for specific needs a business, write scripts for a specific need, build a custom business card website, etc.
And always there will be the 911 calls of "I just did X and nothing works", that goes without saying, there will continue to be hardware failure that needs replacing and new software upgrades. Mindless patching will soon be (thankfully!) a thing of the past and we can move onto computers actually providing value, and it's you, the consultant that can provide the most value to a small business to customize a generic solution like Windows Small Business Server 2003 to meet the needs of the accountant, the sales person, the bike shop, the dentist office, and so on.
I think once we put all this patching behind us, we can move into better and more valuable things. Small Business Customers will finally see the best return on investment from their computer purchase, and it's the VAPs/VARs that are going to give it to them, not the major corporations like Microsoft.
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