THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA

CRN is reporting that Oracle will be coming out with a competitor to the Microsoft Small Business Server platform.  Except that in their description of the program I think they forgot about email?  They just talk about the server, a web app server and a portal server?

[update note] And it's not just that mail needs to be inside or outside the server, it's the whole integration package with the mail client on the desktop.  What mail client will Larry recommend?  Outlook Express?  [just kidding]

Also Larry, if you don't also have the wizards of SBS, the “tao”, the “Yoda” of the box, you don't have what this market needs.  Wayne Small was attending the Australian Partner conference and reported that many partners there didn't know about the wizards.

Jeff Middleton once again put it the best...

“The IT Pro needs to be assured that the wizards are not there to dumb down the product as much as to get you into the game, at a documented and known point of installation where the true skill tasks are needed.

Nobody takes a Windows CD and copies the files individually, then uses a remote machine to edit a clean registry to add the services and devices manually. We don't do that because there's no point.

With SBS, bringing all those applications to a point of ready to use is only the start of the challenge that still requires significant skills.“