We all know and use Microsoft products every day.. I did until i got a powerbook g4 for myself..

but the same day my laptop got here, so did the Web Hoster Package from Microsoft.

If you guys dont know about it, its a pretty sweet deal. If you are a web hoster and prove yourself competent around servers, they will send you a copy of Advanced Server with 25 CALs, .. for free, all you have to do is add their logo to your site and explain how you use win2k for hosting..

What else is included? One Free support call through some big call center for one incident..

A two CD seminar on how to build the ultimate webhosting system..

i can just imagine what we'll be doing with advanced server's clustering and distributed filesystems...

also, on their web hoster group site, they have a very nice tool which works with ActiveDirectory. It basically stores all client data and permissions in the Directory and gives a web interface to the administrator and the client..


if microsoft ever commercially released something to manage web farms , something in the order of Exchange , or Project , and had even a ****ty MMC control panel for it....

the consequences could be very interesting.

Aloha
do you have a link ??
I know when I was a trainer for HP there were all kinds of deals with MS for stuff like this
used to be one where you could get sql for $99 and exchange for $99 etc...
they are goine now ;(
anyway a link would be great
how did they ask you if you were comfy around servers ???

Microsoft is not good for the hosting industry. The only things they care about are profits and domination. I'm typing this on a laptop I've reconfigured for someone because Windows 98 on my pc decided not to work anymore and resist attempts to reinstall. i wouldn't want Windows on a server.

I think we'll all be laughing in a few months when, although Microsoft is giving away their software for free, no one switches to it, simply because Linux and *BSD are better products.

http://www.microsoft.com/isn/isp/wwhp


few things..

Fine microsoft wants to make money.. that doesnt necessarily make their products ****ty..

Their enterprise software is getting there and isnt as expensive as some others in the industry..

Sql Server 2000 is very nice.. specially for XML publishing and other ****..

Oracle's 9i is good too, but the costs outweigh the benefits..

ASP is a _very_ nice environment to program in .. PHP is getting there, but the scalability of ASP and the whole lot of programming languages you can use to extend it is very nice.. COM objects are very nice, and do fairly well.

I myself am a open source developer, but many of the professional IT firms I work for use ASP a LOT, what does that mean? People have put in some time to choosing the NT/2K platform over the opensource linux or bsd platforms for a couple of key reasons.

Ease of use.
Knowing that Microsoft wont go out of business.
Cheaper to implement than Enterprise UNIX servers or even mid
range..


Why did we start supporting NT, because there was a demand for it.

In the market its not our preferences or what we think that matter.

it all comes down to this.

Rule #1. the customer is always right
Rule #2. if you think that the customer could be smarter and do something else, read Rule #2

aloha,
not to start a war but why do people say microsoft sucks and is no good unix is better
and open source is better
just for fun
look at some things like people use to say
IE navigator sucks Netscape is so much better
hmmmm look now Netscape sucks IE is way better
Opera is cool but not the best by far

a good read :
http://www.oreilly.com/news/osconint_0601.html

now back to point read somethign somewhere could not find it but was basically that MS has come a long way and is getting better at patching security holes etc....
a unsecure newbie on unix is just as vulneribale as a IIS box put to gether by a newbie
so it comes down to insecurities in both personal level and software level
since MS is funded they pay people to update upgrade and find holes where open source comes from holes that people find and patch then they have to submit there finds a lot of people find holes patch it themselves and do not turn it in to be updated.

hmmm how good is bind a lot of holes other unix programs open source since written by general people to fill a niche can still have bad holes Bind is a good example.
not saying that one is better than other just putting thoughts out there.

some things that MS is doing that look like cool potential are things like sharepoint has some good ideas for intranets etc...
since a lot of people do use MS word excel etc...

just some thoughts but look at the IE vs Netscape in your head to say one is so much better and that is the way it is
MS is a force to be dealt with and is not going away

ya get my point ...;)