Microsoft Fans Don't Respond

By James Gaskin, NetworkWorld.com, 08/11/06

I accused Microsoft fans (or Microsoft employees) of running an "astro turf" campaign by sending feedback that looks like it comes from real people but using fake addresses. Even Microsoft fans accusing me of being mean to MS who send real addresses don't answer when I respond. What's up with you people? Conversation a lost art?

One reader complianed about my review of Microsoft's upcoming Small Business Server 2003 R2. He said he wasn't a Microsoft employee, and SBS installs easily, safely, and securely, intimating I wasn't bright enough to understand how this all works. But while he's not employed by MS, he is an SBS MVP consultant, meaning he gets all or most of his income supporting MS products. I contend many small businesses don't have the resources to secure their servers or manage Exchange e-mail servers properly (especially very small businesses, the target market of SBS).

I wrote back the following: "So you're willing to bet that 100 percent, or even 90 percent, of your SBS customers have an up-to-date, secured installation with all appropriate patches and security alerts under control without much outside help? If that's true, I'll do a story on just you guys and how your customers are more secure than most. "

Doesn't that seem fair? Yet days have passed with no response. Perhaps he's too busy after the most recent Patch Tuesday to read his e-mail. And, by the way, Microsoft delayed the SBS 2003 R2 upgrade after the review went to print. No satisfactory explanation why except for the normal "quality guarantee" verbiage.

My e-mail inbox is open. I'm happy to run SMB success stories whether they include Microsoft, Linux, or pen and paper. But the Linux people send me details while the Microsoft people mostly accuse me of hating Microsoft. Send details, people, send details.

Back to Small Business Tech Notes

Comments

I think you should start writing that story, then ;-). Not that it hasn't been written by many others before, though.

The "resources" small businesses need to support SBS are in the range of 2-3 hours of out-sourced tech support, per month.

Perhaps you'd consider business owners that have SBS what they think. That might be far more valuable to the audience than any impressions you may form yourself.

Best regards, Les.

Posted by: Les Connor on August 11, 2006 06:19 PM

I don't have an outside consultant, run SBS and I'm fully patched and secure.

You got your patches installed this month? I do.

What details do you want? I don't earn 100% of my income supporting Microsoft products.

Some of us DIYers are geeky enough to do this and SBS has the wizards to help us.

I would be less secure on Linux since I don't have the community and nor the resources to properly keep my firm secure.

(real email address.. had it for years)

Posted by: Susan Bradley on August 11, 2006 07:19 PM

BTW what is your email address?

Posted by: Susan on August 12, 2006 12:30 PM

Where can we see the comments?

Posted by: Les Connor on August 12, 2006 10:47 PM

Mr. Gaskin, for the record, I responded to your private email the same day I received it (last Tuesday). After being informed of your public response saying I did not contact yuou, I attempted to contact you again (using the email address of james@gaskin.com) and this time, I received an undeliverable message after 24 hours.

So I am now trying to contact you for the 3rd time via this user response link to your article. If by some chance you actually end up receiving any of my several attempts to contact you, I would love forward to hearing back from you.

Here is my initial response to your "challenge":

James, I hope I'm not naïve enough to claim that every SBS site is up to date on their security patches! Some intervention, even with R2, is required. But R2 makes the whole process so much easier, and that was the (positive) point I was trying to make.

Microsoft's SBS Dev team has done a fantastic job in designing a new front end interface to WSUS in R2. They've simplified the whole process of reviewing new patches, and scheduling them for download and implementation. I say this from personal experience. I tried installing standard WSUS on several systems in the past year, and was frustrated with the learning curve and process. But, with R2 I would not be hesitant in training selected users at a customer site to be responsible for reviewing/scheduling security patches.

Saying that, most customers that I know still prefer that their SBS consultant continue to manage and schedule implementation of security patches. In those cases, the combination of Remote Web Workplace and WSUS in SBS R2 makes this a very easy process for the SBS consultant to do remotely.

Now, if you can get me an SBS R2/WSUS console that allows me to monitor multiple customer sites on one screen, then we would be rocking!

Finally, I'd be happy to touch base with my counterparts, if that's OK with you, to see if any of them would like to take you up on their offer!

Sincerely,
Kevin Weilbacher

Posted by: Kevin Weilbacher on August 13, 2006 01:17 PM