Re: [PLUG] Re: MS and SaaS (was Hello!)

[Matt Ayres <matta@tektonic.net>]

JP Vossen wrote:
> > One area where Microsoft really has an edge is in the SaaS
> > (Software-as-a-Service) industry -- services such as hosted exchange
> > and hosted sharepoint are some of the earliest and most prominent SaaS
> > offerings.
>
> Is that perhaps because managing the dense opacity of MS products, 
> beyond a trivial level, is beyond all but the larger shops with 
> specialist staffs?  Or am I just being bitter now?  :-)  But what I 
> mean is, have you ever had to deal with the utter insanity required to 
> usefully back up Exchange?  Personally, I have not, but I've heard a 
> lot of horror stories (many in more-or-less pro-MS magazines like 
> Redmond).
You're not very far off with your bitterness.  It makes more sense to 
outsource the office Exchange server to a hosting provider who will 
store it in a secure/controlled datacenter, perform upgrades/management, 
and take care of the backups rather than hosting it under a desk 
connected to the office DSL/T1 being backed up to zip disk.  Of course a 
large part of this is both the management (support) and the backups. I 
don't have any first hand experience with the Exchange part of the whole 
thing, everyone around here only deals with Linux :)  It it were me I'd 
probably virtualize the Exchange server (providing a separate instance 
to each customer) and then backup the entire virtualized environment.

Also, since this is the first time most people are hearing of SaaS - 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_Service

Regards,
Matt
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