Stop Buying Servers » Microsoft

Microsoft says Stop Buying Servers

David Schrag — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:33:19 +0000

Well, not really. But they did pull the plug on their multi-server on-premise solution, Essential Business Server. Here are some links to the announcement and reaction, courtesy of Harry Brelsford at SMBNation.

EBS team blog
Wayne Small, Microsoft MVP
Mitch Garvis, Microsoft MVP

To those readers who bought EBS in the past year … hey, I tried to warn you!

There’s no such thing as a free domain

David Schrag — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:40:46 +0000

Microsoft Office Live Small Business used to offer a free Internet domain for their users. As of October 1, 2009, this freebie goes bye-bye. Domains up for renewal after that date will only be renewed if you pay $14.95 a year. Although I’m never crazy about paying for something that used to be free, I will at least give Microsoft credit for:

Making the annual charge reasonable rather than gouging their existing customers.
Not pretending that the Office Live Small Business service will somehow be enhanced or that this is anything but a way for Microsoft to earn more (or lose less) money.

My guess is that Microsoft has determined that a huge number of people signed up for the Office Live Small Business service simply because it was free, and that Microsoft has no desire to keep paying the ICANN fees for folks who aren’t even using the service (like yours truly).

I learned a new term today for the practice of giving something away at first and charging for it later: “freemium.” It’s hardly a new concept. Drug dealers have been using this model forever.

Collaboration in the cloud

David Schrag — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:36:46 +0000

ChannelPro-SMB’s Rich Freeman has put together a nice chart listing features of several on-line collaboration suites.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace: Overview

David Schrag — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:47:31 +0000

Microsoft Office Live Workspace (MOLW) is one of Microsoft’s many cloud-based services. Microsoft describes the service thusly:

Save your documents to the Web—for free!

Access files from anywhere

View documents from almost any computer with a Web browser

No more flash drives—files are there when and where you need them

Password-protected document sharing; you control who views and edits

Simplified online collaboration; everyone works from the same documents

Work with programs you know

Save over 1,000 Microsoft Office documents in one online place

Manage documents in one convenient place

Open and save files from familiar programs like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Synchronize contact, task, and event lists with Outlook

According to the FAQ, MOLW requires no downloads, works with Internet Explorer and Firefox, works with many document types (including non-Microsoft-Office files), allows sharing of documents with up to 100 other people, and integrates with Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 to allow direct saving of documents from local applications into the cloud. And at least for now, it’s free!

One major drawback: your storage is limited to 500 MB. So it’s really not realistic for anything but the smallest business to use it as a central repository. In theory, each user could set up his or her own OLW; that way a 10-person company would have up to 5 GB of storage. But each person would be responsible for sharing out his or her own files with all the other employees, and I think that would get a little unwieldy.

In future posts, I’ll go through the process of setting up a MOLW account and kick the tires.