Friday, December 19, 2008

Seasons Greetings and Happy Holidays

Hey everybody,
To end the year off with a bang, I just received my final University subject grades – I passed which is great. I was hoping for a Credit, but mustn’t have done as well as I hoped in the exam. But the great news is I have now officially completed my Masters degree. Graduation is in April ’09.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, Season’s Greetings and hope you all have a great New Years.

It’s been a pretty exciting year, and I’m hoping 2009 will be even better!

Cheers :- )

Phil

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Microsoft – You can do much better

Hey everybody,
I’ve been out and about over the past few months and have met up with quite a number of CTO’s, CIO’s and IT Ops managers and I’ve got a big problem with 3 technologies from Microsoft:

- Exchange direct push Versus Blackberry
- Virtual Server / Hyper-V Versus VMWare
- Terminal Services / Remote desktop Versus Citrix

All of the companies I visited had recently chosen not to implement Microsoft’s solutions, instead opting for the competition – Despite the fact that they had to pay significantly for them.

All but one of the managers I had spoken to said that they didn’t even bother with a technical trial of the Microsoft solutions mainly because they had been told that the competitor’s products were far more mature and were more reliable.

Only one of the managers actually knew why they went for a VMWare / Blackberry and Citrix environment and said that they had run tests on the comparable Microsoft solutions, which is commendable.

All of the Microsoft solutions here are free (with the correct versions of the software and CAL purchases), thus saving significant money in a large scale implementation. I know there are very good reasons as to why one would pick VMWare over Virtual Server or Blackberry over Exchange or Citrix over Terminal Services.

My main concern here is that most of the IT managers I spoke with didn’t even bother to find out about the Microsoft solutions or run a trial simply because they were advised otherwise or that they had their own opinion about it.

I personally think this is quite sad – I believe these products are great and I would always recommend the Microsoft offerings (unless there were special requirements which the Microsoft offerings didn’t address).

In my mind it all comes down to advertising and general awareness of the Microsoft product offerings. Microsoft – I think you guys can do this better. You need to be out at industry events promoting your products, you need a better advertising campaign (don’t get me started on the “I’m a PC" ads), you need to be pro-actively seeking out companies that are looking at running projects and you also need to be getting involved with the guys in the trenches to try and turn around this negative publicity. Lastly – Microsoft – You just need to get people excited and inspired with your technology!

Anyway – That’s just my rant for the day.
Hope you are all well.

Cheers,
Phil P