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Microsoft Communications The Internet IT

Microsoft Serious About VoIP 176

Posted by Zonk from the because-they-have-dalliances-all-the-time dept.
VoIPluvr writes "Microsoft, is quietly turning into a voice-over-IP powerhouse. It all started with the launch of its Microsoft Live Communication Server. Bill Gates says, 'Communicating in a better way has a huge impact for business,' and he states that he wants Microsoft to marry the PC, the cell phone and the desk phone. Recently, Microsoft teamed up with VoIP companies like Sylantro to offer hosted IP-PBX services, and now is rumored to have bought Teleo, a small VoIP company based in San Francisco. Microsoft's dominance on the desktop is helping the company extend its reach into the fast growing VoIP business, thus putting it in direct competition with the likes of Cisco. Teleo, for instance could help the company compete more effectively with the likes of Yahoo and Skype."
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Microsoft Serious About VoIP

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  • First MS joke (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:22PM (#12970212)
    Prepare for the blue screech of death when you pick up the phone!

    Sorry...

    • Re:First MS joke (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "Hey can I call you back? Hello? Dammit. *CTRL-ALT-DEL CTRL-ALT-DEL CTRL-ALT-DEL CTRL-ALT-DEL*"


      "Can you hear me now?"


      system has recovered from a serious error

    • Too late (Score:3, Informative)

      by WindBourne ( 631190 )
      Avaya built one of their switches based on Windows. They tried to sell it at the same price as their *nix switches. They lost money on it big time. What was interesting was that the switch had to have double the CPU and double the ram. Even with that, it still crashed and could not carry the same load. Finally, the support cost were enormous.

    • Re:First MS joke (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Spetiam ( 671180 )
      Joke away, but if MS does come through with these implementations... I'm sorry, then MS is on the ball, and no amount of bashing by the True Believers will change that.
    • Wont be funny if it happens while you are dialing 911...

      Or if your phone server decides its got a worm and is too busy spamming then letting you dial out..

      ( this goes for other products as well, not just microsoft. )
    • if anybody is in the position to take VOIP to the masses it's MS... yet the facts are their infrastructure and OS is wholely unable to support the 5 9s we take for granted with our phones.

      PC have had the harware for VOIP for at least the last 5-7 years.. multimedia integration in windows hardware is so p-poor that it's STILL not practical. from a networking point of view it would be wonderful to only run 1 wire to each desk.. It would be way cool to route all the phone messages thru outlook too... the f

    • The Black&White Screen Of Death just didn't cut it (and the darker-grey on lighter-grey screen of death was even lamer :-) And besides, Windows can stay up for 45 days at a time, and my phone usually runs out of battery before then.

      Just as long as there's no Dancing Paperclip of Death or helpful friendly dog named Bob to go fetch phone numbers for me, it'll be ok....

  • 802.16 + well supported VoIP = end of cellular (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Disclaimer: while I work for a company heavily involved in telco stuff, my work is more with associated divisions than the part that deals with VoIP. But it does mean I have some insight into how this all works and how the industry is adapting, or should I say, leaping on board.

    VoIP is definitely taking off, and we're beginning to see most of the major telco equipment manufacturers signing onto it. I thought the most interesting part of the article was Microsoft's partnership with the big telco equipment

    • I understand your enthusiam, but after using VoIP services for nearly a year in our business we switched back to copper. No matter what we did to improve the situation, the call quality never really measured up to that of even a cell phone. IP was never really meant to route real-time traffic, and it definitely shows. QoS can help, but with more and more real-time traffic being driven onto the Internet (video, streaming audio) then my fear is that the QoS indicator is just meaningless. After all, how ma
      • VoIP requires that you either run a clean network (i.e. no virus) or that you allocate a portion of the network to VOIP, statically or priority-based. Sadly, Most companies will do neither, and then complain about
      • The IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) which is coming out of 3GPP (GMS) and 3GPP2 (CDMA) will establish a solid footing for VoIP where it can match the quality of current PSTN.

        IMS will allow Quality of Service (QOS) on the network, between carriers.

        IMS will also support much more security than available now with VoIP. Especially between carriers.

        IMS will allow roaming, because the network you are on will probably not give you QOS otherwise.

        Best of all, IMS is based on SIP and other IETF standards. It will a
      • What type of call processing system were you running? Separate VLAN's for data and voice? I've rolled out Cisco phone systems in some pretty dodgy network scenarios, and voice quality has never really been an issue.

    • Re:802.16 + well supported VoIP = end of cellular (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That third link is a redirect to Tubgirl, way to mod that up to Interesting mods...
    • You'll use an HPC instead of a traditional cellphone

      wow, now that's quite a lot of voice processing to do.

      how about a b... cluster? hmpphh...

    • 802.16 isn't currently usable for real mobile endpoints, so it's not yet a replacement for cellular. The differences between endpoint types are
      • Fixed - The antenna's nailed up somewhere, and doesn't move, and you can even aim a directional antenna. This part works pretty solidly.
      • Portable - you can move one of the endpoints to a different location and it'll still work, as long as it's close enough to the tower, so you can take your laptop to your customer's office or home or the coffeeshop and sit down an
    • The fucking THIRD LINK is a link to TUBGIRL.
      Fuck all you lazy mods who rank my "Troll" mod as unfair.

      Click the third link and suffer the consequences, you lazy assclowns.
  • Great now my cellphone, home phone and PC can all crash at once.. thanks Micrsofot for being the leader in innovation!!

  • is ms desperately seeking (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hsmith ( 818216 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:24PM (#12970229)
    a true "core" product?

    everyone else seems to be seeking out one specific segment of the market, is MS finally realizing specializing in everything means you specialize in nothing?

    i think they are good and bad, but they seem to have lost the wind in their sails...

  • Can't they leave ANYTHING alone? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TempusMagus ( 723668 ) * on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:26PM (#12970233) Homepage Journal
    Microsoft makes a PDF-like format, Microsoft takes over municipal water works, Microsoft creates new ice-cream cone. My god, can't Microsoft leave anything alone? This is what is going to kill MS; they are doing too many things and fighting too many wars on too many fronts in an effort to maintain market dominance. You would think large companies would ditch MS wholesale simply because MS may one day use the revenue to compete with them.
    • My god, can't Microsoft leave anything alone? This is what is going to kill MS;

      What alternate reality do you come from? Microsoft has been doing their embrace-and-extend dance for 20 years and it keeps on working: they grab a market, either by buying some existing company, take that market by storm, and they either corner it completely, succeed very well, or pull out early enough so that nobody notices.

      The last big failure of Microsoft I can remember was the set-top box market, but then everybody failed

      • Otherwise, just look at what MS produces: mice, keyboard, office suites, video players, games, consoles, internet portals, TV content, etc etc etc... and none of these activities are failing.

        Ummmm. Actually AFIK, the only divisions at MS that actually make a profit are Windows and Office (although I believe MSN recently had their first ever profitable quarter).

        It's simply not correct to say that none of their activities are failing -- practically all of them are. It's just that they have so much cash

        • You know, alot of people really don't understand that either. MSN TV (formerly Web TV) is yet another losing entity. All it does is keep the Microsoft name out there and MS considers it a marketing expense at the end of the day.

          Having mindshare is far more desirable than not having marketshare and they understand that.
        • According the the Wired article on Jim Allard of the XBox team, the XBox is profitable and was profitable in less time than the PS2 was for sony.

        • Re:Can't they leave ANYTHING alone? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by KarmaMB84 ( 743001 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @06:17PM (#12970690)
          Microsoft's Client, Information Worker and Server & Tools divisions are all profitable. This encompasses Windows XP, Windows 2003, Office, Exchange, SQL Server and probably just about every piece of software they produce. Their Home & Entertainment division has posted a one-time profitable quarter and their Business Solutions division is also posting losses. The Mobile and Embedded division is around the break-even point if not profitable already. I'm not sure where they hide their mouse and keyboard business at but I doubt they'd still be producing mice and keyboards if that segment didn't at least pay for itself in mindshare if not actual dollars. The "failing" divisions simply are not mature with a steady revenue stream yet.
          • It's virtually impossible to track these things. MS does not really break down the costs involved in creating and maintaining these individual pieces of software. There is a whole lot of "subsidies" from different branches including R&D, labor, materials etc.

            For example if the SQL server division was spun off on it's own it could never stay in business with 20% or so of the market given the expenses involved in constantly adding new features and adding scalibility.

        • Re:Can't they leave ANYTHING alone? (Score:4, Informative)

          by YU Nicks NE Way ( 129084 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @09:19PM (#12971430)
          Sheesh! Insightful? How about "totally false"?

          Three of the seven divisions are very profitable (Office, Client, and Server), MSN has been profitable for three of the last four quarters, and will be profitable for the fiscal year, Home and Entertainment was profitable for the first time in Q2 (which ended in December), but won't be steadily profitable for another few months yet, MED is break-even, and is spending money on marketing and growth rather than on turning a profit. The only division which is hurting in the business software division (Navision, Fargo, etc.), which is quite new.

          Bear in mind that NT didn't make a profit for a decade -- now it makes between seven and ten billion dollars a year of profit, depending how you count it.
        • Then you don't know much, since you have absolutely no way to know how much each product line makes. But if you used just a little bit of logic, you'd probably realize that Microsoft is probably doing pretty good on those $130 bluetooth keyboards. Not to mention they have a virtual monopoly on split keyboards.

          Microsoft is not stupid. When I was in college, one of my professors was the former VP of Worldwide Sales. His boss was Ballmer, and as much as I didn't like him or MS, he was one of the most intellig
        • You could say the same about Google. The only part of them that makes money is the advertising business. The company is a bucket full of holes, there's just a hell of a lot more water being poured in than is leaking out.
    • You know, I can perfectly see the logic and even convenience in combining the phone (land and cell; it's gonna happen anyways) and the PC - even though the article says that "Microsoft wants to" do the above, are they the ones who wanna or are they (again) just buying out someone else who already does?

      Also, I don't mind at all a giant taking over several divisions of the same domain (communications, graphic design, etc) if their goal is making a better product and if they're big because they're the best at
    • A company that is publicly-traded is going to grow for as long as it can, as the stock market rewards growth prospects much more than profit margins (btw, M$'s profit margins are around ~30%).

      That said, VoIP is a pretty reasonable direction for M$, it's something that they can easily embed in their OS and rip the benefits afterwards.

    • Microsoft is possibly the best run company in modern history. So forgive them if they don't take the advice of random slashbots.
      • You must love the mob. I mean, hey extortion, strong-arming the competition, buying up competition, yeah they're the best! Add a little kick to a puppy and slaughter some children and they'd be just fab! M$ is evil. They are the stuff that flowed through the sewer in Ghostbusters. I believe this attempt to hijack VoIP will be more evidence. Watch for the usual tactics. They'll attempt to bastardize any standards in VoIP and slowly make competitor's versions "incompatible."

    • Re:Can't they leave ANYTHING alone? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dev1t ( 804957 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @09:02PM (#12971364)
      Has everyone lost their minds??? Every large compay in the world has it's hands in so many different pots it's amazing. UPS builds battle ships for god sake. Phillip Morris makes bread... The list is endless. If any corporation truely wants to succeed the need to diversify heavily. If microsoft or Linus Torvalds, for that matter, wants to build a better diaper I say go for it!!! Especially if it helps employ some people. On a side note there was once a flsh website that had an active matrix of people and the many MANY boards they sat on. It was very scarey seeing where some board members crossed conflicting companies. If anyone knows what it was let us all know.
    • They apparently have a duty to fulfill. Remember, it isn't invented until Microsoft invents it. By the way, some of us have already been augmenting our pay-per-line telephone service with VoIP, and using other solutions, some open source. But, you won't find those things in Glossy PC Trademagazine (tm), because the developers don't have the cash to pay off the editors. However, every PHB and his cousin will know about MS VoIP, and I'm going to have an uphill battle explaining to them why we shouldn't toss o
    • >You would think large companies would ditch MS wholesale simply because MS may one day use the revenue to compete with them.

      One could also say: you would think large software companies would ditch Linux wholesale simply because Linux and open source software may one day use compete with them.

      Coompetion - Cisco and Microsoft are in that situation right now.

      And Red Hat more and more looks like Microsoft - if you do on top of their OS anything they want to do (HA software, J2EE, etc.) they will give yo

  • Microsoft cultivates more animus (Score:5, Interesting)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) <yayagu@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:26PM (#12970234) Journal

    I wonder how this is going to play with the Telco's. I worked a long time at one of the Telco's and we did much/most of our work on IBM mainframes and Unix servers. Then our high level management and Microsoft marketers got very cozy and all of a sudden many of our critical applications began shifting to the Windows 2000, SQLServer, IIS platform. This was all very much with heavy opposition from technical staff, but their input wasn't wanted. In the course of five to ten years I saw us (them?) become very heavily vested in Microsoft platforms (including the public facing web site (which was nothing but problematic rolling out on the MS platform)).

    And now, Microsoft wants to enter the market of the telcos? I know everyone is jumping in on this, and I for one have little empathy/sympathy for the PHB's who've made their beds with Microsoft, but I wonder how much they like Microsoft now?

    • Well unless they really stabalize their operating system or decide NOT to use it and use something basied on Unix like the GSX9000 then they will never be able to compete with the core VoIP market.. I have a few friends who work for one of the largest telecos in the U.S on their VoIP hardware and he tells me their switches handle millions of phone calls every second.. I don't know any MS software that can do the same..

      Now as far as them marketing and profiting off of a desktop application which integrate
    • Traditional PBXs have been doomed for years - Moore's Law means there hasn't been a good reason to deploy a non-IP PBX into a new location for at least 3-4 years, even if it's still going to connect to the public telephone network using a T1 or individual copper lines. The old PBX makers like Avaya (formerly Lucent/AT&T/WesternElectric) have gone from transitional support for old PBXs with VOIP add-ons to full VOIP systems and retained as much of their feature knowledge as they could, and major new pla
  • over the years everyone has hated MS at one time or anohter.. and /.'ers seem to realy hate MS all i know is i like MS .. i say keep up the work (you keep me in biz) your consultant

    • Re:one thing to say (Score:2, Interesting)

      by linsys ( 793123 )
      I agree with you for the most part.. however if you start implementing VoIP PBX solutions for your customers and it crashed regularly yes, you are gonna make a bit of cash off your customer, but it's also going to make you look like a CRAPPY consultant..

      I believe in a mix of Unix, Linux and MS solutions for my customers.. I don't look so bad when PCs crash, but when their mail server or web server is down because IIS got doss attacked it makes me look horible(or probably would, I NEVER would implement an
  • Doesn't MSN Messenger provide a voice over Internet protocol of sorts via add-on services like Net2Phone? I think it use to be free wiht MSN Messenger and a few other services like Yahoo! (IIRC), but now a fee is charged.

  • Microsoft is a control freak. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Goalie_Ca ( 584234 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:37PM (#12970274)
    It seems to me like any new sector or industry comes along and people start making money microsoft goes AAHHH we don't control that! So they buy a bunch of companies and produce some buggy vaporware and spend a bunch of money. Is it possible for them to be happy with that they got or at least not branch out so much and focus on goods they can produce and produce them well.

  • What's up with the commas? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:40PM (#12970296)
    The submitter, VoIPluvr, must be using the Yale comma style and not the more popular Harvard style.

  • MSFT a networking company? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HockeyPuck ( 141947 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:43PM (#12970312)
    So letsee... in order to go from traditional PBX to VOIP you could either a) deploy a brand new separate IP network to directly replace your PBX or B) Upgrade your existing IP network including all of your ethernet switches so that they support PoE (Power over Ethernet).

    You may need to implement QOS (you don't want some FTP transfer blocking time sensitive voice traffic.

    You may need to redesign your core routers, backbone etc for this increase in traffic.

    Also, if the CallManager (the computer that sets up the connection between the two telephones) goes down, you're not making phone calls. Do you really want to trust this to Windows? Yes, I realize that Cisco's CallManager runs on Windows, but rumor has it they are making a linux version.

    So the question remains, with all the changes to your network that are required I doubt this will go far.. unless of course MSFT buys Juniper, Nortel...
    • POE (Power over Ethernet) is only relevant if you've using VOIP phone hardware, not if you're using PC software clients (like Windows Messenger), and even then you only need it if you want to avoid wall-worts or guarantee that your phones work during power failures, which shouldn't happen very often and only matter if you want your employees to work in the dark without PCs - it's usually not a problem, especially if your employees have cell phones that they can use in case of emergencies.

      LAN QoS can mat

  • MS applied for a recent VIOP patent (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:44PM (#12970317)
    Method for outputting a crashdump as a series of audio tones.

  • Hey bill, now hear this.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Halvy ( 748070 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:46PM (#12970322) Journal

    bill: hey steve, can you hear me now!!

    steve bummer: what WHAT!!!

    bill: GOOOOOOODDDD...

  • "This phonecall best recieved with VoIP Explorer" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @04:46PM (#12970325)
    I wonder when that little pop-up will start appearing on computer screens during incoming VoIP calls. I can think of a million ways MS could embrace-and-extend VoIP to add features that only work/ "work best" with MS software. Makers of VoIP add-ons will then test their widgets with MS only and not support "non-standard" operating systems.
    • Sadly a quite a lot of investment has already been made in VoIP without any MS extensions, and by the time that MS releases a VoIP client (Presuming it comes with longhorn) all those wonderful MS extensions will be dropped into a world full of devices that just won't talk to them.

      Plus they've got MSN Messenger anyway.

  • Define "Serious" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nova Express ( 100383 ) <lawrenceperson.gmail@com> on Saturday July 02, 2005 @05:01PM (#12970378) Homepage Journal
    By "Serious," I take it to mean "Microsoft will launch a VOIP service with much fanfare, will quickly grab 20-30% of the market, will then let the division languish through incompetence and lack of direction, and 10 years from now the service will still be hanging around without making a profit."

    See also:

    Hotmail
    WebTV
    X-Box
    MSN
    MSNBC
    Etc.

  • Teleo, for instance could help the company compete more effectively with the likes of Yahoo and Skype.
    Something tells me competing with them was anywhere in MS's plans...

  • ObCellphone (Score:3, Funny)

    by dangitman ( 862676 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @05:30PM (#12970503)
    and he states that he wants Microsoft to marry the PC, the cell phone and the desk phone

    Damnit! Don't they get it? I just want a simple phone that works, not lots of gadets. How am I supposed to fit my PC, my cellphone and my desk phone in a shirt pocket?

    Besides, I find this whole thing unnatural and sick. We should pass a Constitutional amendment prohibiting the marrying of objects. Just because Bill Gates has a sexual fetish for devices, doesn't mean I want it shoved in my face. Respect the sanctity of human marriage!

  • Why? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Comatose51 ( 687974 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @05:34PM (#12970521) Homepage
    he states that he wants Microsoft to marry the PC, the cell phone and the desk phone, Why? Has anyone thought of that? Integration is nice but sometimes it's pointless and harmful. For example, my Motorola v600 is Java powered. That's great except sometimes I can punch things in faster than it can handle. The battery life is poor. My older StarTac was perfect for me. No java or camera but it go the job done right. I never had to reboot a cellphone until I got this new one. Oh, let's not forget how the battery life is kind of mediocre. Let me count the number of times I've taken advantage of the Java and camera features: 5. Those 5 times, I could have done without them anyways. MS needs to take a lesson fron Apple and even *nix. Do one thing and do it well. Then make all those things play together well. God I wish Apply made cellphones.
    • he states that he wants Microsoft to marry the PC, the cell phone and the desk phone
      Unfortunately, he can't do that in washington state, where by law marriage is only between a man and a woman.

      +1 stupid
    • desktop integration is FAR overdue. Better than half the US still has phone lines plugged into computers [poor modem users]... and they still have to pick up a phone to answer a call. WHY?

      other silly questions... Why can't I use the modem in my USB fax/scanner/printer as a general purpose modem? Why can't my computer be programmed to check my answering machine for messages? Why can't I change the channels on my TV or stereo from my PC directly? I know there's hacks to do most of those things, but wh

  • After the first word of this story? I don't think so. What is wrong with the world?

  • cross-platform solutions? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dalutong ( 260603 ) <djtansey AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday July 02, 2005 @05:39PM (#12970550)
    Skype seems to be the only product making cross-platform solutions.

    as for video -- it doesn't seem like ANYONE is looking for cross-platform compatibility. iChat doesn't work with netmeeting or gnomemeeting (and the tiny AIM video screen sucks). video4skype only works in windows (though it is great in windows.)

    i use linux, but i have recently had to reinstall (dual-boot) windows so I can use AIM's video chat with my girlfriend (who uses iChat.) It's the only solution that easily works through odd connections (firewalls,etc.) And, unfortunately, xmeeting just doesn't work that easily for the non tech savvy (like her.)

    why hasn't there been movement to make cross-platform video solutions?
    • why hasn't there been movement to make cross-platform video solutions?

      patents and codecs my dear chap... patents and codecs...

    • The way to get cross-platform support is to design using open standards. (That doesn't have to be open source - public standards is enough.) H.323 is a bit too complex and doesn't scale very well, but almost everybody's system out there supports it, at least as a lowest-common-denominator interface. SIP really does the job, and everybody *says* they're supporting SIP, even if that's really only an edge interface in their current product and there's something else inside, like Skinny or H.323-with-extra-h
  • This one is ours , lets take another.
    Seriously Microsoft getting into telecommunications stinks of Monopoly Leveraging to me.
    If your convicted of abusing a monopoly , several special rules apply or rather they do not as the courts seem rather passive
  • First, I would love to see Cisco and Microsoft slugging it out.

    Second, Microsoft has as much right as anyone to engage in a VoIP business. Reflex knee-jerk bashing is just that, and unhelpful with considering all the ramifications. Simply assuming the worst because it is Microsoft is dead flat wrong and guaranteed to be counterproductive to countering them in competition.

    Third, the *nix/non-MS world hasn't taken big enough of a part in brainstorming, talking over, promulgating, and adopting uniform stan

  • Nothing to worry about (Score:4, Insightful)

    by eno2001 ( 527078 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @06:02PM (#12970633) Homepage Journal
    Where I work, we have a saying. "There are only two things that need to be up and running 24x7 without a hitch. Ever: phone and e-mail". Until Microsoft can provide an OS with this kind of reliability that doesn't cost the farm (like Windows Data Center on Unisys) they will not be chosen as a serious contender for carrier grade mail or phone. How many large ISPs out there use Exchange for mail? None. An for people like me... I want carrier grade quality in everything even for my own home use. That's why I use *nix for anything serious.
    • Ummm...yeah... you mean like that thing called Exchange that hardly anyone uses?

      It may not be 24x7, but I don't think that's hurt their sales.

      If their VoIP product can produce similar uptimes, integrate with the rest of the Microsoft universe, and be pushed by the 1000s of MS consultants, I think it will sell just fine.
      • Read it again. I mentioned something about large ISPs that provide carrier grade mail services. Not little businesses that run internal groupware. BIG difference. If everyone dropped Sendmail tomorrow and switched over to Exchange as the standard for all Internet mail, you'd get more reliability out of two tin cans and string with moths gnawing at the fibers. I don't think anyone in their right mind would use Exchange for a carrier grade mail solution. And carrier grade is what EVERYONE should demand

        • large ISPs that provide carrier grade mail services

          You mean, like, um...BT? Which runs (wait for it) Exchange. A majority of all email seats in large organizations (those with more than 2000 mailboxes) are serviced by Exchange. The largest government agencies in the world run Exchange.

          By contrast, no major ISP runs sendmail. Google runs a proprietary MTA based on a heavily modified Linux kernel. Hotmail runs a proprietary MTA based on a Windows 2003 server kernel. Yahoo, proprietary, FreeBSD. AOL,

          • Sendmail is THE MTA of choice for all major ISPs. Hotmail is not an ISP. Yahoo is not an ISP. Google is not an ISP. Think more along the lines of Speakeasy and then you're talking a major ISP. AOL isn't even really an ISP sinc eit only services the average person.
            • AOL isn't even really an ISP sinc eit [sic] only services [sic] the average person
              I have a hard time understanding how AOL, which is the largest ISP in the world, bar none, isn't "really an ISP". Similarly, MSN (which doesn't use SendMail), and is the second largest ISP in the world, must "not really be an ISP".

              Sendmail is not a real player among MTAs any more, and it hasn't been in the best part of a dacade.
            • > Sendmail is THE MTA of choice for all major ISPs.

              Not any more.
              And what a sad piece of shit sendmail is!

              In UNIX Hater's Handbook they rightly dedicated it a whole chapter "Sendmail: The Vietnam of Berkeley Unix".
              Hahaha....

              > Hotmail is not an ISP. Yahoo is not an ISP. Google is not an ISP.

              ISP? Big deal - what now matters are these three.

              According to educated guesses, sendmail has about 40% of MTA share:
              http://www.softpanorama.org/Mail/mta.shtml [softpanorama.org]
              See this too: http://www.tummy.com/journals/entries [tummy.com]
              • Did I say anybody actully uses Sendmail? No. I said no one in their right mind uses Exchange as an MTA for carrier grade operations. I don't even use Sendmail. I use Courier. At work we use SunOne Messaging server. The only places I've seen Exchange used are either small organizations that can't afford a decent admin or large corporations for internal use only. That's it.

  • I prefer different systems (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bender Unit 22 ( 216955 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @06:09PM (#12970658) Journal
    Microsoft have tied all their systems nicely together. I don't know much about Microsoft products but once or twice every year I see problems that brings down every Microsoft based problems.

    Whenever we need different MS systems to talk to each other, they pretty much needs to be on the same network or at least have so many open network ports between them that firewalling them in different security zones becomes useless.

    I'd prefer different systems with clearly defined boundries, communicating trough standard protocols instead. Moving everything to a big consolidated MS monster, might have helped bring down some of the expenses of having different systems. But I have yet to see it bring better stability.

    I see some signs of people not any longer want everything to be tied in to a MS system after have had problems with one vendor to rule them all.

    but sadly the management in a lot of places does not understand why they don't get the stability they had on the mainframe after moving it all to MS.
  • Unless they can figure out a way to have Excel sing out the financial results of British and Japanese companies.

    Then, maybe, just mabye, THHGTTG, can be a success.

    Oh, Microsoft, yeah, well, they can't make great music with their hind legs.....
  • ...Microsoft serious about all this other shit it never came up with, but will gladly "innovate" on.

    Nigga please. I been told this shit a million times. When they gain the foresight to come up with a good idea from it's foundations, then I'll trust them to innovate on that core. These people don't understand anything, they just take ideas and self-righteously claim an understanding they don't have. That understanding comes from surveys that hardly depict what the framers of that technology intended, but wh
  • as a ravenous, hyper-competent business enterprise that arose from the arena of personal computing to become the global juggernaut that it is today.

    That might be true, except for the part about "competent" and the unspoken assumption that the PC marketplace they conquered is in any way, shape or form comparable to an established industry, where the markets are well-understood and the players are all tough characters with a string of corporate corpses in their respective pasts.

    If one looks at the many atte
  • Most of the same software and hardware technology behind Vonage and Packet8 is also used VERY frequently in internal phone networks. My uneducated guess is that more than half of new corporate phone systems are VOIP. It just makes sense for a corporate phone system. There is one less network to worry about, huge flexibility in changing extensions or moving them, options to connect sites over a WAN, potential use with WiFi and VPN for users, etc. MSFT's interest in this area shouldn't be too surprising,
  • Those clowns haven't been able to even converge the PDA and the cellphone. Now they're talking about the PC, the cellphone, and the desktop phone, as if they're any good at any of them. All they've got is a brand, a monopoly, and the best marketers money can buy. Phones are bad enough without lowering them to Microsoft standards.
  • "Microsoft's dominance on the desktop is helping the company extend its reach into the fast growing VoIP business, thus putting it in direct competition with the likes of Cisco."

    So, what Cisco needs to do is put sneaky code into its routers that identifies traffic between two MS products and "messes" with it. ~;-)

    all the best,

    drew

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