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Let's see...

Most successful desktop operating system: Microsoft Windows.
Most successful server operating system: Microsoft Windows Server.
Most successful office suite: Microsoft Office.

Three good reasons (and there would be more like Exchange Server, Sharepoint Portal, SQL Server, Visual Studio) to also have confidence in the man if he were hired as a product manager.

Completely unrelated. Despite the fact that being the most successful != being the best (Or infact being reality), the guy should be hired based on his CV and own leadership skills, not the work of other PMs and Engineers.

Like it or not, Microsoft still is the most IMPORTANT software company around, and they don't hire incompetent idiots either.

Great last pitch there. Maybe I should start going on about how RedHat and Oracle essentially run the world. Might balance out all the crap by having it coming out form all sides. I mean, RedHat AND Oracle don't hire idiots. >.>
 
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Let's see...

Most successful desktop operating system: Microsoft Windows.
Most successful server operating system: Microsoft Windows Server.
Most successful office suite: Microsoft Office.

Three good reasons (and there would be more like Exchange Server, Sharepoint Portal, SQL Server, Visual Studio) to also have confidence in the man if he were hired as a product manager.

Like it or not, Microsoft still is the most IMPORTANT software company around, and they don't hire incompetent idiots either.

Winni.... you are right... they do not hire idiots. Well... maybe some... one in particular comes to mind. :)

Microsoft may have the most successful OS and other things, but they are living on their past and lack vision from the top. MS is quickly making themselves less relevant in the market place. Without better vision, they may become the Kodak of software.
 
Let's see...

Most successful desktop operating system: Microsoft Windows.
Most successful server operating system: Microsoft Windows Server.
Most successful office suite: Microsoft Office.

Yes, having been given a monopoly over the IBM compatible PC platform by IBM themselves is quite a measure of how great Microsoft is. :rolleyes:

Their success is based on IBM's failure to realise how important that market would become. They have not built their success off of making good products.

And Microsoft Windows Server ? really ? Is it successful because I have to install 30 of those to run a simple SSO db like AD whereas I can run eDirectory off of 3 Sun boxes and achieve the same results with about 100 times more objects in the directory ?

But this story is about a guy who manages data center, not about Microsoft's rise to power and their illegal moves to remain at the top for years. And their data center seems to have been top notch, since you rarely hear of Windows update not working or Microsoft.com being down, or MSN messenger not responding or Hotmail.com being on the fritz.
 
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Working at Microsoft is not a detriment to his career. It's a boon. I think you'd be hard pressed to find people who would refuse to work at the most successful software company in the world, except the most zealot-minded Apple fanboys, such as we have here. I understand why people downvote the story, but for goodness' sake, I'm fairly sure Apple's HR people know better than us. Give him a freaking break. He's going go to do a job 8000 times better than any random schmuck off the streets (or on these forums for that matter), and that's why he got it.
 
I think you'd be hard pressed to find people who would refuse to work at the most successful software company in the world, except the most zealot-minded Apple fanboys, such as we have here.

I'm pretty far from a zealot-minded Apple fanboy (just ask anyone here, I'm usually classified the "troll" in Apple related stories because I lack the magic vision it seems), but I would still refuse to work at Microsoft. They have tried their damndest to make themselves the only industry player, squashing evolutions/revolutions in the industry year after year by making their stuff not interoperable and not documented to allow interoperability with other vendors.

They have literally held the industry back all through the 90s and early 00s, something we're just now breaking free of. Just for that, I would never lend them my expertise no matter the offer. It is an ethical and moral choice, not one based on some crazy love for one brand of products.

That being said, that doesn't mean that the people who work there are incompetent and I'm sure this guy knows how to run a data center.
 
And Microsoft Windows Server ? really ? Is it successful because I have to install 30 of those to run a simple SSO db like AD whereas I can run eDirectory off of 3 Sun boxes and achieve the same results with about 100 times more objects in the directory ?

God, haven't used eDirectory in ages, especially so since Novell has been a bit volatile. Been using a Mixture of FreeIPA/Zimbra OSE/Zimbra Collaboration the last couple of years, much faster and cheaper than a Microsoft stack.

So yes, Microsoft server is so successful because its just the best. :rolleyes:

They have literally held the industry back all through the 90s and early 00s, something we're just now breaking free of. Just for that, I would never lend them my expertise no matter the offer. It is an ethical and moral choice, not one based on some crazy love for one brand of products.

Don't forget the the near-brainwashing of Techs and Admins, keeping most businesses and service providers out of plain ignorance.
 
ITT: People jelly of Microsofts corporate success and a lack of understanding on how important an acquisition like this is.
 
Yes, the best at multiplying it's installed base number by just the fact that it requires so much redundancy. ;)

Let's not even get into licensing... CALs, Per computer, Per user, Per what now ?

still cheaper than a lot of the competition. before we went to sql 2005 we looked at Oracle. by the time you bought the add on packs it was almost $1 million for our installation. SQL was 1/4 that.

AD might be a bit expensive but the AD forests people created in Windows 2000 can be upgraded every version with minimal issues and it works out of the box. with other products you first have to spend months creating your schema, pray it doesn't break when used with other products and upgrading can be a big PITA. AD is the apple of corporate IT. you don't need a team of geeks toiling away for months to code a ldap schema, it just works out of the box
 
Let's see...

Most successful desktop operating system: Microsoft Windows.
Most successful server operating system: Microsoft Windows Server.
Most successful office suite: Microsoft Office.

Three good reasons (and there would be more like Exchange Server, Sharepoint Portal, SQL Server, Visual Studio) to also have confidence in the man if he were hired as a product manager.

Like it or not, Microsoft still is the most IMPORTANT software company around, and they don't hire incompetent idiots either.

Before I start, I want to be clear: I see no problem with Apple hiring this guy, I'm sure it was an intelligent, well-reasoned decision regardless of whether or not it works out.

However, you're just being silly.

Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office were entrenched into the market well over a decade ago, but that doesn't make the current incarnation of the company good at new product development any more than AT&T's history would make it automatically the best cell phone carrier. Visual Studio, Exchange, and SQL Server are enterprise level products, and Apple is not primarily an enterprise-driven business. If you exclude the Xbox (which is only just now starting to pull a profit), the last 5-10 years of Microsoft new consumer-level product development is objectively a sad, profitless story.

(As an aside, including Sharepoint in that list is hilarious. Three out of three companies that I've worked for while Sharepoint was around jumped on that bandwagon and abandoned it in disgust in a year or less. As packaged it is a worst-of-everything-but-hey-at-least-you-have-one-of-everything mess.)

Of course, none of this has anything to do with system administration/architecture, which was the point of the post you were replying to. I'll agree, up to a point, that Microsoft's issue is one of vision, direction, and organization, not engineering talent. The up-to-a-point is that you'd have to be a bit of a weenie (or very risk averse) to be top tier graduate talent to have your whole world at your disposal, and of all the possibilities in the world you'd choose Microsoft over a start up, research group, or more, erm, with the times big corporation (e.g. Google).** Of the CS majors I personally knew in my graduating class at MIT, six work for Google. The only one that works for Microsoft was a business major.

** - Unless you were lucky enough to find a specialized group that Microsoft is dumping research money into that happens to align with what you want to do academically.
 
This lot on these boards are amazing. Incredible what this place has devolved into.

If you people were all here 14 years ago, I guess you would have TORN INTO Apple for hiring Tim Cook from the "beige" PC maker?
 
still cheaper than a lot of the competition. before we went to sql 2005 we looked at Oracle. by the time you bought the add on packs it was almost $1 million for our installation. SQL was 1/4 that.

AD might be a bit expensive but the AD forests people created in Windows 2000 can be upgraded every version with minimal issues and it works out of the box. with other products you first have to spend months creating your schema, pray it doesn't break when used with other products and upgrading can be a big PITA. AD is the apple of corporate IT. you don't need a team of geeks toiling away for months to code a ldap schema, it just works out of the box

1. You aren't looking very hard if your choices became MSSQL vs OracleDB.

2. If you spend months creating your LDAP or even AD schema/map, you need to go back to your clients/customer/contractee/er and do some proper planning.

3. AD was quickly dumped by the likes of Wall Street and Cox Industries. AD is a solution, not the Apple of Corporate IT.
 
Working at Microsoft is not a detriment to his career. It's a boon. I think you'd be hard pressed to find people who would refuse to work at the most successful software company in the world, except the most zealot-minded Apple fanboys, such as we have here. I understand why people downvote the story, but for goodness' sake, I'm fairly sure Apple's HR people know better than us. Give him a freaking break. He's going go to do a job 8000 times better than any random schmuck off the streets (or on these forums for that matter), and that's why he got it.

Working at large, very successful companies isn't always the best. It depends where your priorities are. If you want a good life / work balance then Apple, Google etc ( as a software developer for example ) certainly wouldn't be a great move. However, you'd probably learn a lot by working there too. It would of course look great on your resume.
 
lets see, DB2 is just as expensive if not more. mysql and postgres suck compared to SQL server. we do use them a little. mysql is good for websites but not for internal databases. it's missing a lot of features that SQL and Oracle have because the former CEO is a moron and only put in features to make it standards compliant. i don't think it even had a x64 version back in 2006.

AD is a killer solution for internal IT. it sucks for customer facing ldap, but for your employee database it's great. integrates with MS exchange and upgrades over the years are easy.

This lot on these boards are amazing. Incredible what this place has devolved into.

If you people were all here 14 years ago, I guess you would have TORN INTO Apple for hiring Tim Cook from the "beige" PC maker?


or the other execs who came from macromedia and IBM
 
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lets see, DB2 is just as expensive if not more. mysql and postgres suck compared to SQL server. we do use them a little. mysql is good for websites but not for internal databases. it's missing a lot of features that SQL and Oracle have because the former CEO is a moron and only put in features to make it standards compliant. i don't think it even had a x64 version back in 2006..

Its very subjective to the developer whether what SQL database sucks.

AD is a killer solution for internal IT. it sucks for customer facing ldap, but for your employee database it's great. integrates with MS exchange and upgrades over the years are easy.

Zimbra integrates into itself (Its much more than just an exchange competitor now) and starts from free.
 
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Its very subjective to the developer whether what SQL database sucks.



Zimbra integrates into itself (Its much more than just an exchange competitor now) and starts from free.

zimbra, pop/imap

what a joke. firewall guys, we want email on our phones. we need to open the firewall on a few more ports

exchange is database based which makes it easier and cheaper to manage it

the base product is free but once you start buying add ons like archiving it's a lot more expensive than exchange. and other features that require MS outlook, contacts sync and iphone/mobile are not free. major fail and will cost just as much if not more than MS exchange once you compare apple's to apples
 
zimbra, pop/imap

what a joke. firewall guys, we want email on our phones. we need to open the firewall on a few more ports

exchange is database based which makes it easier and cheaper to manage it

Wait, how does Exchange being database driven have anything to do with Firewall ports of POP/IMAP protocols exactly ? Exchange does the same POP/IMAP protocols and if you want your phones to access the system using those protocols on an Exchange server, you'll have to open the same firewall ports... Are your 2 statements even related ? Do you even realise Zimbra's backend is also database driven, except they use a much more standard RDBMS (MySQL) rather than Exchange's proprietary EDB format (which is loosely based on MDB, since both use the JET database engine, a far inferior database format that's more akin to SQLite than to a real RDBMS).

But of course, you know all of this right ?

And are you suggesting that push based e-mail requires a "database driven" backend in any sort of way ? Because that would be quite ludicrous a claim a to make. And of course, are you suggesting only Exchange does push based e-mail ? Because that would be ignoring Zimbra's Z-Push functionality...

The fact is, AD, Exchange, they are so widespread exactly because of what I said earlier : Microsoft got their monopoly from IBM in the 80s and then proceeded to leverage at every chance to make solutions that do not inter-operate well. AD is integrated into Windows client tightly, it's a pain to make it work for anything else as far as SSOs go. Exchange is a success thanks to Outlook's widespread use, which is thanks to Office's dominance, which achieved it through Windows widespread use on the desktop.

This is typical Microsoft modus operandi and why I have ethical and moral reasons to not work with their products as much as I can personally help it.

Your SQL server example is also short-sighted. A 1/4 the cost of Oracle ? No duh, you're getting 10% of the product. Typical though that people look for Oracle when their needs don't even require it. It's just the best there is right now, and of course, you have to pay for that. However, you don't always need the best, in fact, Oracle is overkill for about 90% of RDBMS use out there.

This is all moot, the subject of this thread is Apple hiring a Data center manager, not a product manager, that used to work at Microsoft. I see no problem in this, the guy is probably very qualified.
 
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no you don't, exchange 2003 and later supports push email like blackberries and no need for pop/imap. and it's probably more supported than using zimbra on the iphone.

it's relative cost. almost everyone uses exchange. if zimbra wants the market they need to price themselves very low or offer killer features MS doesn't. how do you even back up zimbra since exchange has agents available from every major backup application allowing you to do online backups
 
no you don't, exchange 2003 and later supports push email like blackberries and no need for pop/imap. and it's probably more supported than using zimbra on the iphone.

Are you doing this on purpose ? You have failed to address all the points I've brought up, including the fact that Push based e-mail is not a Exchange only feature.

Look, if you want to debate this, at least give us a good-faith performance. None of this bad-faith arguing that just's going to go on and on for pages, where you ignore most points and just re-hash and imply your older debunked points.

it's relative cost. almost everyone uses exchange. if zimbra wants the market they need to price themselves very low or offer killer features MS doesn't. how do you even back up zimbra since exchange has agents available from every major backup application allowing you to do online backups

Zimbra was simply an example. And yes, it does support the same Full/Incremental backups that Exchange does. In fact, Exchange doesn't even support anything but full EDB backups out of the box, the per-mailbox backups/restores the many different 3rd party solution offers are based around hacks.

Microsoft doesn't officially support mailbox-level backups/restores (I'll admit my knowledge stops at around Exchange 2003 thank god), without first restoring the whole storage group to a "recovery" storage group/server and then using Exmerge.exe all things to restore to the production storage group :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823176

Thank god Veritas/HP/CA created those agents...

I think I'll move you to ignore now. It's quite apparent to me that you're simply going to try to shove Microsoft stuff down our throats without even knowing about the competition (as is obvious by your constant bashing of Zimbra based on assumptions which have proven false, simply because it was brought up as an example of one of dozens of collaboration suites out there).
 
zimbra, pop/imap

Yes, it also supports other standards.

what a joke. firewall guys, we want email on our phones. we need to open the firewall on a few more ports

exchange is database based which makes it easier and cheaper to manage it

That makes little sense whatsoever.

the base product is free but once you start buying add ons like archiving it's a lot more expensive than exchange. and other features that require MS outlook, contacts sync and iphone/mobile are not free. major fail and will cost just as much if not more than MS exchange once you compare apple's to apples

VMWare don't sell addons or a base product. They have an OSE edition to meet the GPL requirements and paid versions. Zimlets are created by the community.

Even with the full VMWAre Appliance or Collaboration edition its still cheaper than exchange.
 
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