Useless Conversation

[Hammond]

Ouch, Yea I have full log tracking on all the time because space isn't a issue.  I typically roll them over because going back more than 3 or 4 months is pointless for us. Thankfully we do not have any kind of compliance where issues where I have to keep that stuff forever.

I should mention the logs I was talking about is more OS / Exchange logs in particular.  So if there is a underlying issue it makes it difficult to track the problem down.  Its no different than any other hosted service in that regard though.   

[Ironwood]

So Office 365.  What do I need to know about it to keep us from migrating to it?  Horror stories are good.

Having read all the replies thus far, I'll say this :

Moving to Office365 for E-mail will affect you not one fucking bit.  You'll still be needed, shit will still go wrong, but the pressure of an absolute fucking disaster will no longer rest with you.

The Government can look at your data and, if you're in the UK, you have to be aware of Data protection acts, since the servers are in another fucking contry, but beyond that, it's all good.

If you really want something to rail at, look at your users.  If any one of them has a mailbox bigger than 2GB that they're not willing to pare down, then either fire them or fucking forget it.  Stupid Cunts.

Also, the ability to get it anywhere and have Lync is really quite cool.  Plus, if you're going whole hog, Sharepoint.

[Chimpy]

You also know exactly how much it will cost your company for each employee. No more figuring out if you have enough CALs, buying more CALs than you need, or fucking dealing with CALs at all.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, the usual SaaS Cloud benefits apply.

I like Office 365.  I don't, you know, like it a lot, but it's ok.  There are cheaper Cloud options out there and, frankly, easier installation processes, but for what it is, it's good.  Also, Microsoft are really ramping up the whole Cloud offering and there's some interesting stuff coming down the pipeline.

But as ever, this is NOT a technical decision.  It does, in fact, have FUCK ALL to do with technical people.  You should be consulted on the migration, but the decision shouldn't be coming anywhere near you.  The problem of most Cloud Services is that they tend to rely too much on Techie input when Techie people tend to be the biggest blockers of this type of change, even if it's ultimately far better for the business in question.

I've been on both sides of this one.  I know what I'm talking about.

[Numtini]

I keep wondering if I can sell some kind of cloud email, but looking at 365, the only plan that has email archiving is the pricey pricey 17-20/month/person one? Even the cheap plans would be a hard sell for me. Yay for gubbamint work.

[Ironwood]

Everything's a hard sell right now.  It's the economy.

 

[Hammond]

  The problem of most Cloud Services is that they tend to rely too much on Techie input when Techie people tend to be the biggest blockers of this type of change, even if it's ultimately far better for the business in question.

You are spot on,  technical people are usually their own worst enemy with things like this.  If you complain to much or try to block change it will roll right over you.

[Salamok]

I don't care about my resume.  Partly on principle, partly because I don't like shit being off-site (which I guess makes it all principle).

Is this where we say "get over it"? The next tech business I start will be all in the cloud. Salesforce.com, Amazon services, enterprise gmail, etc. No capital costs whatsoever.

I was tempted to start a tech support business  where the entire business model was doing implementation and maintenance for small to mid size companies in this fashion (VoIP, EC2/S3, Google Apps or Office 365).

edit - Then it dawned on me that I don't like supporting people who do not know wtf they are doing, they all deserve to call India.  Protecting users from themselves is the most thankless job on the planet.

[Ironwood]

It's a much more competitive space than you'd think.  If you're 'starting to think about doing it', you're probably already fucked.

[Salamok]

It's a much more competitive space than you'd think.  If you're 'starting to think about doing it', you're probably already fucked.

I was thinking it like 4-5 years ago when I was watching a buddy muddle through this for his own small business.

[Chimpy]

I keep wondering if I can sell some kind of cloud email, but looking at 365, the only plan that has email archiving is the pricey pricey 17-20/month/person one? Even the cheap plans would be a hard sell for me. Yay for gubbamint work.

Does your organization have it's own volume license or do they piggyback on a larger one?. If you have your own, it would probably be easier to sell it around renewal time do you can shoe the savings on Office and CALs (assuming you are on exchange).

There are also non Microsoft companies that do hosted exchange similar to 365 with different pricing schemes.

[Ironwood]

It's a much more competitive space than you'd think.  If you're 'starting to think about doing it', you're probably already fucked.

I was thinking it like 4-5 years ago when I was watching a buddy muddle through this for his own small business.

You lost the Initiative roll.

[Lantyssa]

Well, there's also the fact that we'd either have to buy all new copies of Office for the company or go with their E3 plan, which will pay for the former in two years.  My boss was being sold this purely as a way to save money, not for any productivity or compliance gains.

Despite any of my own misgivings about outsourcing IT, he will happily shoot himself in the foot if he thinks it will save himself a dollar, then yell at us when the hospital bill costing him even though he was warned.

[Ironwood]

Since something that MS don't advertise is that one E3 licence of Office Pro can be installed on 5 machines, it actually does save a bit in the long run.  I find it's a rather serious alternative to OEM shite or over 3 year licencing shite, especially for the ultra small or the ultra large.  It also puts everything on a handy Cost Per User basis, which accountants and business leaders like.

But again, it's not some magic people/money/effort/time saver.  Like everything, there are upsides and downsides.

But hey ho.

(Also, be aware that it's possible to get it to work on Earlier versions of Outlook 2007, but it just won't be supported.)

[Yegolev]

I know you were dying for me to comment.

Everything is being branded Cloud, XaaS or not.  Best to get on with the people who know how it works and can support it.  Whatever your flavor of "it" is.

Example: there has been a homebrew-ish split-mirror backup solution in place at my now-client for many years.  It got an overhaul during the datacenter migration, with the major change being the disk replication technology changing but for the most part it's about what we have always been doing.  The engineer (whom I have known for 13+ years) was told to rename it from "Split-Mirror Backup" to "Cloud Backup".  On internal documents.  Now, it is true that I no longer have (authorized) access to the storage subsystem, but it's still supported by my ilk and we get involved whenever it hiccups.

Another: my now-client is using a SaaS change/incident/ITIL-wad system, but of course when we have performance issues (the past couple weeks) there is a consultant that comes out to help us with working it out.  So, even SaaS has room for client and consultant billable hours, it's just a shell game where your money comes from.  The work is still being done, India support is still largely shit, the world turns, so there's still a place for you.  Elsewhere.

[Lantyssa]

So if I name the Exchange server "Cloud 9" or such, I should be golden?  Time to make a game of a new naming scheme.

[Yegolev]

Your name could very well gain new clout if you do so.  Not with the techs, but with the administration.

[Yegolev]

It's a much more competitive space than you'd think.  If you're 'starting to think about doing it', you're probably already fucked.

Sorry for the posting aesthetics, but this is basically what I ran into when I was looking to start my own company.  Every IT gap is filled with shitbags already out there, margins are crap, and I'm no salesman so even finding clients would prove to be a chore.  In the absence of a partner that knows how to manage that, I'm channeling my efforts into the Corporate Stooge trench where I already have a good presence.

I'm suddenly considering the idea of referring to my alerting-mechanism implementations as "Cloud Alerting".  Hmmmm...!

[Yegolev]

Do eastern-european women dress so... in their own countries?

[Engels]

Do eastern-european women dress so... in their own countries?

Yes. You have to remember that their gaudiness is in direct correlation to the drab surroundings of soviet era cities. Humans need color, and if the Party won't provide, then the individual will. It seems overkill to us, who have commercial signs in flashing neon, marketing billboards and privately funded architecture all over the danged place, but take a trip to East Berlin or another iron curtain city and, short of Prague, you'll be astounded at how soul-crushingly grey it all is.

[Hammond]

So random probably sexist story I had a nice Russian woman (yea I know not really technically eastern european) that worked at my last job.  She wore these low cut outfits with push up bras to work with the body to match...   One day she decided to come and chat with me and basically leaned over my desk giving me a full cleavage shot.  Being she was married it made for a interest situation which was rather uncomfortable.

Shortly after that uh incident a customer complained about her dress and our HR department put a stop to that.  It was a sad sad day.

[Engels]

US puritanical culture FTL!

[Ingmar]

I keep wondering if I can sell some kind of cloud email, but looking at 365, the only plan that has email archiving is the pricey pricey 17-20/month/person one? Even the cheap plans would be a hard sell for me. Yay for gubbamint work.

How many users do you have? I got Google with the full 10 year archiving deal for $33,000 for 3 years, for 400 mailboxes. Another $20 grand for the project management/migration part of the project, and about 8 grand a year for our voicemail integration through a 3rd party company (ESNA which is pretty slick.) Nobody else I looked at even came close to those numbers. It's basically all expense, too, the only capital involved are the machines we use to run the single sign-on and sync with AD and even those are VMs so just a tiny slice of something we were already paying for.

365 is a good bit more expensive, but you get Office which is definitely significant. Either one is far preferable to running in house or single-server hosted, IMO. The stress decrease from not having to worry about your server blowing up in the middle of the night is a tremendous benefit. And when something *does* blow up, it isn't your ass up at 3 am desperately clutching your keyboard as you pray for ESEUTIL to run cleanly.

[Salamok]

My boss was being sold this purely as a way to save money, not for any productivity or compliance gains.

What a noob!  Everyone knows that there is no such thing as a cost saving change to IT infrastructure.  Change costs money and you usuallyalways undergo another change before you recoup that cost.  Any naysayers to this are shills!

[Numtini]

How many users do you have? I got Google with the full 10 year archiving deal for $33,000 for 3 years, for 400 mailboxes.

I have 120 users. I got a quote of 8/month/user last year for email and archiving from Google, which is about double what our costs run right now, including spam/virus filtering, licensing, etc. In addition to the headache of running exchange in general, we don't have a generator in our town hall and lose email whenever there's a storm, which works really well with Mass' desire to use email for emergency management, so there may be some opportunity for me to sell it as an emergency management thing as it would stay up and be remotely accessible in an emergency.

[Yegolev]

Sheesh.

[Ingmar]

How many users do you have? I got Google with the full 10 year archiving deal for $33,000 for 3 years, for 400 mailboxes.

I have 120 users. I got a quote of 8/month/user last year for email and archiving from Google, which is about double what our costs run right now, including spam/virus filtering, licensing, etc. In addition to the headache of running exchange in general, we don't have a generator in our town hall and lose email whenever there's a storm, which works really well with Mass' desire to use email for emergency management, so there may be some opportunity for me to sell it as an emergency management thing as it would stay up and be remotely accessible in an emergency.

Let me put you in touch with my integrator, it's possible that they might be able to get you a better deal than that. Will send a PM shortly.

[Ironwood]

Sheesh.

[Sky]

We should just start an f13 international consulting firm.

[Yegolev]

Dewey, Skinnem, and Livingston.

[WayAbvPar]

Forget all this shop talk- I want to hear more about the push up bras.

[Zetor]

Do eastern-european women dress so... in their own countries?

Da. That said, it is scientifically proven that Hungarian women are the hottest in the known universe.

[Merusk]

I dated one in High School & the start of college and I'll agree. (Well, Hungarian-Romanian)

But they are BUGFUCK crazy and have the same "I hit 45 and *POOF* I'm short and fat" problem that all Eastern European women seem to have.

[Lantyssa]

But they are BUGFUCK crazy

We had one Romanian flip out on a postdoc.  It started a cold war in the lab.

Some Romanian outside the group asked the postdoc if he forget to tell her what a pretty girl she was.  Apparently it's... common.

[Signe]

If I owned an iPad I would SO be playing Hot Wheels right now!