Category Archives: microsoft

SQL Server 2014 is done: Hekaton, Azure integration

March 18, 2014 onlyconnect

Microsoft has released SQL Server 2014 to manufacturing (an odd phrase in these diskless days) but which signifies that it is code complete for the initial release. General availability is April 1st.

What do you do if hardware trends enable you to stuff vast amounts of RAM into your server, along with many CPU cores? The answer is that you optimize applications to work mostly in RAM, with disk important as a persistence layer. This contrasts to the approach when you have large amounts of disk space and little RAM, when you focus on loading only as much data into memory as you absolutely need.

The implications for a database server are profound. Instead of a logic that goes something like “read from disk, do something, write to disk” you can address the data directly; it is just a memory pointer.

Now combine that with stored procedures compiled to native code. Performance leaps up, and by much more than you get simply by caching data in RAM, or using fast SSD storage, but still using the old disk-based approach in the database engine.

This is the reasoning behind “Hekaton”, properly known as In-Memory OLTP (online transaction processing), which is a new in-memory database engine that comes with SQL Server 2014.

It is fully integrated. You just have to add a filegroup to a a SQL Server database with the keyword CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA and then create a table with the keyword WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED=ON). And for the stored procedures, use WITH NATIVE_COMPILATION.

The speed-up is as great as you would expect. I have seen demonstrations of 30x or more performance increases, like this one in a demo based on one from the SQL Pass conference, but which I did for myself in one of Microsoft’s “Hands On Labs”:

In another demo, on an Azure VM, I got a speed up of 7x. Only seven times faster! Still, hard to complain about those sorts of numbers.

Unfortunately, in-memory OLTP is spoilt by some rather severe limitations in this release. The first problem is that a combination of the need to support native compilation of stored procedures, and other limitations, means that only a subset of T-SQL (the query and management language of SQL Server) is supported. You can see the list of what is not supported here; and it is depressing reading, with lots of keywords that you likely do use at the moment; even IDENTITY is on the list of what does not work.

Another issue is that the ability of In-Memory OLTP to take advantage of hardware is not as extensive as you might hope. Lead program manager Kevin Liu told me at a recent press workshop that the team recommends restricting total data size to 256GB, and that the recommended number of CPU sockets is two. You can get servers today with much more memory and more sockets. It gets complicated though: in a multi-socket server memory has processor affinity and there is a thing called NUMA (Non-Uniform Nemory Access) that describes the way memory is shared between processors.

According to Liu, Microsoft expects to lift these limitations in future releases, as well as improving T-SQL support, but things like this remind you that it is a version one release.

What else is in SQL Server 2014? There is some neat Azure integration, including a managed backup tool that is almost one click to have your data backed up to Azure storage; a brilliant facility for small businesses. You can also use Azure for high availability, creating always-on replicas in Azure VMs.

Data warehouse users will like the new clustered columnstore indexes, which allow you do use a column-oriented table structure for much faster processing of typical report and analysis queries. Columnstore indexes first appeared in SQL Server 2012 but were not updateable. Now they are.

SQL Server is well liked, licensing hassles aside; and even on licensing, Microsoft can always point at Oracle and claim, rightly, to be cheaper and less complex. It has earned a reputation for solid performance. SQL Server 2014 looks as good as ever, even if the management tools now look rather dated – the shell for SQL Server Management Studio uses an old version of Visual Studio, which is one of the reasons. I also suspect the SQL Server team lacks a dialog designer, but doubt that the average database admin cares one jot.

That said, it is difficult to describe this as a must-have upgrade, unless you can make good use of “Hekaton” in-memory OLTP. The porting effort will be worth it presuming you can get it to work. One of the good fits for the technology is managing web app session data, or, as in the example above, rapid processing to display recommendations or customisations on a web site.

I can imaging though that many users will look at Hekaton and decide that it is too much work or too immature for immediate use. What is left for them, apart from some nice Azure integration?

Not a huge amount, it seems to me, making this to my mind a transitional release.

Are you planning to upgrade? I would be interested to know your reasons why or why not.

blogging, linux, microsoft, php, Web

Running WordPress on Windows Azure

March 11, 2014 onlyconnect

I am investigating hosting this site on Windows Azure, partly as a learning exercise, and possibly to enable easier scaling.

I discovered that any web site short of Standard is worthless other than for experimentation and prototyping. I set up a Small Standard Web Site (£48 per month). But what database? I recalled that you can run WordPress with SQL Server and tried using a 1GB SQL Server Web Edition hosted on Azure (£6.35 per month).

In order to use this, I used the Brandoo WordPress configuration which is set up for SQL Server. I later discovered that it uses the WP Db Abstraction plug-in which according to its home page has not been updated for two years. The installation worked, but some plug-ins reported database errors. I imported some posts and found that search was not working; all searches failed with nothing found.

My conclusion is that running WordPress with SQL Server is unwise unless you have no choice. I looked for another solution.

Azure has a Web Site template which uses WordPress and a MySQL database hosted by ClearDB. I would rather not involve another hosting company, so considered other options. One is to run a VM on Azure and to install MySQL on it. If you are doing that, you might as well put WordPress on the same VM at least until the traffic justifies scaling out. So I have created a new Medium Linux VM – two virtual cores, 3.5GB RAM – at £57 per month, with Ubuntu, and installed the LAMP stack and WordPress on that. The cost is similar to the Windows/SQL Server setup, but the VM is a higher specification, since a Small Web Site is 1 virtual core and 1.75GB RAM. You also get full access to the VM, as opposed to the limited access that a Web Site offers. The installation is a bit more effort but performance is better and it looks like this might work.

microsoft, professional

The problem with backpedalling on Windows 8: it is the wrong direction

March 4, 2014 onlyconnect 6 Comments

Lukas Mathis has a detailed post on Windows 8, including its advantages over the Apple iPad as a productivity tablet. Mathis switched from the iPad to a Surface Pro:

In general, I really love the Surface, and I use it much more, and for many more things, than I ever used any iPad I ever owned. But it’s not perfect.

Mathis likes the Metro (Windows Runtime) UI:

Almost everything that happens inside the Metro environment is fantastic. It’s clean, fast, and powerful. The apps are easy to use, but still offer a lot. The gesture-based user interface requires you to learn a few new things, but takes very little time to get used to.

This makes interesting reading for Windows users (and there seem to be many) who have convinced themselves that Metro is difficult, pointless or obstructive, though of course it may be those things to them. It is also true that you cannot easily get your work done in Metro alone. Office, Visual Studio, Windows Live Writer are three quick examples of applications which do not have any good substitute, not to mention countless custom line of business applications, so you still need the desktop whether you like it or not.

Mathis is also scathing about various aspects of Windows:

The problems with Windows 8 don’t end with the integration between desktop and Metro. There’s also the problem that good old Windows seems to be a pretty terrible operating system.

He relates encounters with DLL errors, inconsistent visual design, old stuff left in for legacy reasons, and a culture of adware, spyware and malware.

Personally I have learned how to navigate the Windows software world and have fewer problems than Mathis but that said, his complaints are justified.

These problems are hard to fix which is why Microsoft made such radical changes in Windows 8, making a new, secure and touch-friendly personality the centre and (conceptually at least) isolating the old desktop into a legacy area for running your existing apps. Although there are many flaws in the way this change has been executed, it seems to me a reasonable approach if Windows is to have a future beyond business desktops.

What was and is wrong with Windows 8? My own list of flaws includes:

Poor selection and quality of apps, even the built-in ones that had no reason not to be great
A design that lacks visual appeal
An immature development platform, too difficult, buggy and incomplete
Lack of a status bar in Metro so you cannot see at a glance essentials like time, date and battery life
Widescreen design that does not work well in portrait
Confusions like two versions of Internet Explorer, Metro PC settings vs Control panel and so on

I could go on; but there are also plenty of things to like, and I disagree with commonly expressed views like “it is no good without touch” (I use it constantly with only keyboard and mouse and it is fine) or “bring back the Start menu” (I like the new Start menu which improves in several ways over its predecessor).

It does not matter what I think though; the truth is that the business world in particular has largely rejected Windows 8, and the consumer world is hardly in love with it either. I look at lists of PCs and laptops for sale to businesses and the majority state something like “Windows 8 downgraded to Windows 7” or “Windows 7 with option to upgrade to Windows 8”. This tells the whole story.

It seems to me that the Windows 8 team has been largely disbanded, following Stephen Sinofsky’s resignation and Julie Larson-Green’s sideways moves; she is now “Chief Experience Officer in the Applications and Services Group”; and whatever that means, she is no longer driving the Windows team. Microsoft has to come to terms with the failure of Windows 8 to meet its initial objectives and to make peace with the user base that has rejected it. There are signs of this happening, with coming updates that improve integration between Metro and Desktop and ease the learning path for keyboard and mouse users:

Most of the changes in the update are designed to appease keyboard and mouse users, with options to show Windows 8 apps on the desktop taskbar, the ability to see show the desktop taskbar above Windows 8-style apps, and a new title bar at the top of Windows 8 apps with options to minimize, close, or snap apps.

The big question though is what happens to Metro in the next major release of Windows, bearing in mind that its chief advocates are no longer running the show. Should and will Microsoft stop trying to push the unwanted Metro environment on users and go back to improving the desktop, as it did when moving from Windows Vista to Windows 7?

My guess is that we will see some renewed focus on the desktop; but Microsoft will also be aware that the problems that gave rise to Metro still exist. The Windows desktop is useless on tablets, the Windows culture foists numerous applications with evil intent on users, and the whole design of traditional Windows is out of step with modern moves towards simpler, safer and easier to manage computing devices.

Therefore the correct direction for Microsoft is to improve Metro, rather than to abandon it. If we see a renewed focus on the desktop to the extent that energetic Metro development ceases, Microsoft will be marching backwards (and perhaps it will).

The only plausible “Plan B” is to do what some thought Microsoft should have done in the first place, which is to evolve Windows Phone to work on tablets and to replace Metro with a future generation of the Windows Phone OS, perhaps running alongside the desktop in a similar manner. Since Microsoft has stated its aim of a unified development platform for Windows Phone and Windows Runtime, Plan B might turn out the same as Plan A.

All this is late in the day, maybe too late, but the point is this: a revitalised desktop in Windows 9 will do little to arrest its decline.

.net, microsoft, mobile

X is for Xamarin: One company that is pleased to see Nokia X

February 26, 2014 onlyconnect 1 Comment

Xamarin, which provides cross-platform development tools for targeting iOS and Android wtih C#, is not exhibiting here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but does have a presence for meetings, and I caught up with Joseph Hill who is Director of Developer Relations.

Xamarin has just announced a joint SDK with SAP along with some SAP-specific support in its cloud testing service; but Monday’s announcement of Nokia X, Android smartphones from soon-to-be-Microsoft Nokia, was even bigger news from Hill’s perspective.

If you are a Windows Phone developer with apps written in C#, Xamarin gives you a way to port your code to Nokia X. Apparently Nokia itself has taken advantage of this to port Nokia Mix Radio, as described by Nokia’s developers here. Nokia also used MVVM Cross in order to take cross-platform abstraction beyond what Xamarin itself gives them (Xamarin is deliberately restricted to non-visual code).

Nokia states that it will do all future development using Microsoft’s Portable Class Libraries, and is also refactoring existing code:

The final step in our journey towards the common architecture is to throw out the legacy code from the Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps so they’re stripped back to existing PCL shared assemblies and then integrate them with our fully shared codebase. Now that the Nokia X has launched that’s the next major goal we’re striving towards and work begins now.

I imagine that Xamarin could prove useful in some of Microsoft’s other internal projects as it prepares for a world in which there is an official Microsoft Android platform.

As an aside, it seems to me unlikely that Microsoft will do anything other than run with Nokia X after the acquisition. Microsoft is supporting Nokia X with Skype and OneDrive, which is an indication of its attitude.

microsoft, mobile, samsung

Samsung evolving KNOX into complete mobile device management solution

February 26, 2014 onlyconnect

Samsung introduced KNOX at the 2013 Mobile World Congress (MWC). It is a secure app and data container for Samsung mobiles, backed by hardware, enabling businesses to run apps that are isolated from a user’s personal apps (which might include badly behaved or even malicious apps). Data is encrypted so that business secrets are safe if the device goes astray.

The core of Knox is a hardware process called TIMA (Trustzone Integrity Measurement). This checks for tampering in the core operating system (trusted boot) and sets a tamper bit if it detects a problem. The tamper bit cannot be set in software alone.

A device with KNOX activated can be flipped between personal and business (KNOX) personalities. It is like having two smartphones in one. Whether this is a desirable approach is up for debate, but it does secure business apps and data.

We did not hear much about KNOX after last year’s MWC. It was released a few months later, but snags included limited device support (only the latest Samsung devices), the need to prepare apps with a special KNOX wrapper before they could be used, and the need to hire a Samsung partner like Centrify to provide administration tools.

All that has changed following last night’s announcement of the next generation of KNOX. Highlights:

Most apps can now be installed in KNOX without any special wrapper

You can use a third-party container such as Good, Fixmo Safezone, or MobileIron AppConnect in place of the KNOX container, but still using KNOX hardware protection.

Two factor authentication (for example requiring a fingerprint swipe as well as a password to access a KNOX container)

KNOX supports Microsoft’s workplace join (a kind of lightweight domain join) for secure access to Microsoft network resources.

Samsung has introduced a cloud-based Mobile Device Management (MDM) tool called KNOX EMM (Enterprise Mobility Management). This runs on Microsoft’s Azure platform and integrates with Azure Active Directory (which can itself link to on-premise Active Directory) so that small businesses on Office 365, or large businesses which prefer a cloud tool, can manage both Knox and other devices. EMM is primarily aimed at SMEs but apparently can scale up without limit.

EMM will also support non-Samsung devices.

EMM includes an app marketplace allowing businesses to purchase and deploy apps. The example we were shown was the Box cloud storage service.

Availability is promised for the second quarter of 2014.

.net, azure, cloud computing, microsoft, sharepoint

New features in Windows Azure, including web site backup, .NET mobile services

February 23, 2014 onlyconnect

Microsoft has announced new features in Windows Azure, its cloud platform, described by VP Scott Guthrie on his blog.

Aside: I agree with this comment to his post:

Thank you Scott for update. I wish dozens of MS folks and MS representatives would have a clue about Azure roadmap to help businesses plan their release schedules / migration plans. Till that happens, this blog will remain the main source of updates and a hint of roadmap.

The changes are significant. ExpressRoute offers connectivity to Azure without going through the public internet. Currently you have to use an Equinix datacentre, Level 3 cloud connect, or an AT&T MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) VPN. For enterprises that can meet the requirements and who are wary about data passing through the internet, or who want better connectivity, it is an interesting option.

Next up is backup and restore for Azure web sites. Azure web sites are a way of deploying web applications, ranging from free to multi-instance with automatic scaling. You need at least a Standard site for serious use, as I explained here.

Now you can set up scheduled backup for both the web site and a supporting database. The feature is in preview but you can try it now using the Azure web management portal.

I noticed a couple of things. One is that the storage account used must be in the same subscription as the web site. I also spotted this warning:

which states that “frequent backups can increase you database costs by up to 100%”. Still, it is a handy feature.

Azure mobile services, designed to supply data to mobile apps, has been extended to support .NET code (previously you had to use Javascript). If you download the code, notes Guthrie, you find that it is “simply an ASP.NET Web API project with additional Mobile Service NuGet packages included.”

Mobile Services also have new support for notification hubs and for PhoneGap (a way of building mobile apps using HTML and JavaScript).

Another feature that caught my eye is easy linking of third-party apps to Azure Active Directory (which is also used by Office 365). For example, if you are struggling with SharePoint and its poor clients for Windows, iOS and Android, you might consider using Dropbox for business instead. Now you can integrate Dropbox for Business with your Office 365 user directory by selecting it from the Azure management portal.

microsoft, visual studio

Visual Studio license expired: not what you want to see just before boarding a flight

February 22, 2014 onlyconnect 5 Comments

While waiting to board I fired up Visual Studio 2013 thinking I might tinker with the game I am working on during the flight.

I got this unwelcome message. “Your license has gone stale.” This is because I have an MSDN version which apparently is no longer a perpetual license.

Thanks to what looks like a beginner programming error, I am also informed that the license will expire in 2147483647 days.

The other factor here is that I only use Visual Studio on this machine when travelling. Although my subscription is still in date, the software has to call home once in a while or it stops working.

Fair enough for Microsoft to protect its rights but I wonder if this could be fine-tuned.

microsoft, software development, visual studio

Microsoft improves its web app builder for Windows Phone, but where is it going with this?

February 21, 2014 onlyconnect

Microsoft has improved its browser-based Windows Phone App Studio beta and added the ability to generate Windows Store apps. The changes are described here.

First, a quick tour. App Studio is carefully described as a tool for building “content-based apps”. The personal use case is an app to show off your recent holiday, favourite band, movie or team, and for businesses, a showcase for your company or a menu for your restaurant.

I find this curious. What is the point of this kind of app? If I want to create a fan project, wouldn’t a mobile-friendly web site or blog be better? And for businesses, what is the value of an app that lacks intelligence? For example, a restaurant might want an app linked to a loyalty scheme where you collect points towards a free meal or qualify for offers, but how many will want an app just to check a menu, which they could easily do online?

Still, I like the idea of an app that will make it easier to read this blog on Windows Phone, so I went in and built an app.

Microsoft is continuing its peculiar and infuriating aversion to proper documentation, but there is a a how to that is somewhat informative. “You can also create a custom action”, it says, but does not tell you what such an action can do or how to use it.

That said, the development environment is reasonably intuitive. There is no interface builder at the level of buttons and listboxes; rather, you drag high-level elements into sections and the user interface is built for you. For example, I added an RSS feed, entered the URL for this blog, and it built a UI to browse and read blog entries.

Everything is data bound, and the data can be stored either locally or else hosted by Microsoft, in which case you can amend it dynamically:

App Studio Data Services means the data is stored in App Studio and depends on an internet connection. If you update your data in App Studio, your app will automatically update. This allows you to create live apps that don’t need to be updated when you want to change data.

Large or sophisticated data sets are not the target here though. You could store a short list of addresses, for example.

You can also add elements including HTML text, RSS feeds, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, and Bing searches. You can add actions including initiating a phone call or email, searching Nokia music, or getting directions from Nokia HERE maps.

As you work, a live preview of the app appears alongside your work, a nice feature.

Once done, you can generate the app.

New in this version is the ability to generate a Windows Store App for Windows 8.1, as well as a phone app. Once in Visual Studio, you can do what you like, though there is no way back to the visual builder. Apps generated use XAML and C#.

App Studio also compiles a Windows Phone binary package (not yet for Windows Store apps) which you can install immediately, provided you have added the necessary certificate. You can install the app by scanning a QR code.

There is good work here, and if by any chance you do want to build a “content app” of the type envisaged, it is great.

I have a couple of reservations though.

First, it is too limited to be useful for real-world apps, unless you just use it as a starting point for a Visual Studio project. It needs the ability to write snippets of code, and the ability to link to business data sources like Azure Mobile Services and SQL Server. It also needs a login facility supporting at least Office 365 and Microsoft IDs.

Second, it seems to me that Microsoft is working simultaneously on several projects with overlapping purpose, which is to simplify app building.

Project Siena is a visual app builder implemented as a Windows 8 app; I looked at it here.

Visual Studio Lightswitch is a visual app builder in Visual Studio, which builds apps for Silverlight and HTML.

Access 2013 Web Apps let you build custom databases that hook into Office 365. I looked at these here. This is one easy app builder that really makes sense to me, allowing reasonably sophisticated data models and using Office 365 identities for log-in and permissions.

Windows Phone App Studio as described above.

Now, I appreciate that there are slightly different target markets in each of these. Lightswitch cannot build store apps, Access Web Apps require SharePoint or Office 365, Project Siena cannot build phone apps, and so on.

However, Microsoft needs to unify its development platform, and a proliferation of tools all going for the supposed non-technical app developer is not helping its cause. I also suspect that the demand for consumer “content-based apps” is vanishingly small.

Personally I think Microsoft should both improve and shout from the rooftops about the under appreciated Access 2013 web apps, scrap at least two of the other three, and integrate their functionality so that we have one easy to use app builder that can target Windows Store apps and Windows Phone apps.

cloud computing, google, microsoft

Microsoft Office 365 and the battle for simplicity

February 18, 2014 onlyconnect 6 Comments

Last week I reviewed a Google Chromebook. Next, I assisted a small business move from Office 365 to Office 365 – yes, Microsoft’s software as a service (SaaS) offering is divided into plans, such that if you want to move from certain plans to certain other plans you have to start again with a new account and copy your data across as best you can, which seems contrary to the smooth experience the cloud is meant to offer. The experience prompts some reflections.

Do not move between Office 365 plans then, you might argue; but this is not the only complication with Office 365. There are two reasons for its complexity:

1. Although it is SaaS, Office 365 uses a hybrid model in that users are expected to run desktop Office as well as having an Office 365 account. This is a strength in that Word, Outlook and especially Excel are mature and capable products which many users (myself included) find more productive than equivalent browser-based apps, though familiarity is a factor in this. It is also a weakness, since you have a traditional desktop installation working alongside cloud services. Further, if your PC is stolen, you cannot just pick up another PC, log in, and carry on where you left off. You need to install Office first.

Contrast this to the Chromebook, which adopts a pure cloud model. Technically, many browser apps do run locally, in that JavaScript, Flash applets or Google’s native client executes on your local machine just like Office. This is hidden from the user though, and any installations are tucked away in temporary internet files. If you sign into Chrome on another computer, your settings, bookmarks, history, passwords and browser extensions are synched automatically.

Microsoft has made great strides with its Office installer. Office 2013 installs in most cases using application virtualisation, based on Microsoft’s App-V technology, which means it runs in an isolated environment and is not prone to problems like dynamic library version conflicts or registry errors. The application streaming is also smart enough to let you run applications before they are fully downloaded, by downloading the essential features first and finishing off in the background. The speed with which you can get started with desktop Office, when downloaded as part of an Office 365 subscription, is impressive.

Nevertheless, Microsoft has not eliminated all the issues with desktop software. Outlook was tricky to migrate, for example, in the move with which I assisted. You have to go to the Mail applet in Control Panel, delete the Outlook profile, and create a new one. If you are not careful you can get a scenario where Outlook tries to start up, pauses for a while, and finally announces “Cannot open the Outlook window” and quits. Then you need a web search or a Windows expert to help you out. This kind of experience is less likely with a Chromebook or any pure cloud model where you simply log onto your cloud service.

The worst example of desktop complexity spoiling cloud simplicity is the SharePoint client confusingly called SkyDrive Pro. It is meant to synch SharePoint documents with your local computer but does not work reliably, and trying to fix it involves fiddly instructions to clear your cache, and subsequent re-download of lots of data (I recommend that you do not use SkyDrive Pro).

2. Office 365 is based on applications which were originally built to be managed by system administrators. The core of it is Exchange and SharePoint, both of which come with a myriad of dependencies and configuration options. In their Office 365 guise, these complications are somewhat hidden, and Microsoft has wrapped them with a decent web user interface, both for end users and Office 365 administrators. Nevertheless, the complexity remains, and there is not much in on-premise Exchange that is not also available in Office 365, particularly if you are willing to log on with PowerShell.

This is not a bad thing as such. For businesses with sophisticated Exchange setups it is a good thing, since the features they need are available in Office 365, and the tools with which to configure it are familiar.

However, it does mean that administering Office 365 is more demanding than perhaps it would have been if designed from the ground up as a cloud application. There are also odd limitations and overlapping features. Let’s say you want to have contacts shared between multiple users. Do you use a SharePoint list, or an Exchange public folder? If you use a public folder, why is it that a top-level public folder can only contain mail items whereas a sub-folder can contain contacts, tasks or calendar items? And if you use an Exchange public folder, don’t forget to go into Outlook and add it to public folder favorites, which enables magic like offline access, and to check the option to “Show as an Outlook address book” so you can select email addresses from it when sending an email – all knowledge which comes from experience of Exchange and Outlook, and which is not intuitive or obvious.

The battle of simplicity versus productivity and features

Considering how Office 365 was created, and Microsoft’s desktop heritage, the progress Microsoft has made in wrestling it into a comprehensive and relatively low-maintenance cloud platform is impressive; but more needs to be done before it comes close to Google’s offering in terms of ease of use and freedom from the hassles of maintaining PCs. Microsoft’s battle is to achieve Google-like simplicity of use but without losing the productivity and features which users value.

The question on Google’s side is how quickly it can offer enough of the features for which users and administrators value Microsoft’s platform to tempt more businesses to make the transition. That means the ability to work on documents and spreadsheets in Google’s browser apps without missing Word and Excel, as well as archiving, compliance and management features to match Exchange.

Many are already happy to work in Google apps, of course. I would be interested to hear from others what keeps them on Microsoft’s platform, or alternatively, why they have found Google (or another cloud provider) a satisfactory alternative.

Tim Anderson's IT Writing