Is Microsoft trying to get rid of partners through Office 365?
blog.williamhilsum.com
blog.williamhilsum.com
In simpler words, partners that offer hosted Exchange no longer add any value to the customer experience or to Microsoft's business other than as a sales channel. Given the direction SaaS is going, into massively centralized clouds, this shouldn't surprise anyone at all.
It doesn't feel like Microsoft is being predatory here, I'd say this is simply an instance of a larger market force acting on everyone in the space. A vendor who makes a hosted software solution is either going to host it themselves in a ginormous and expensive cloud or host it in a cloud utility like Amazon or Google. There simply isn't extra fat in the "supply chain" to support an intermediary host.
This explains why Microsoft's own solution is cheaper and better. It has to be. My conjecture is that the only reason it has taken so long to be cheaper and better is because of internal politics over hosting their own Office competing with desktop license revenues.
I know next to nothing about Office 365 offerings, BTW. I looked at them briefly, and gave up trying to figure them out. Also, I've read Microsoft's terms for BPOS and they scare me.
1. The HN submitter is the linked post's author.
2. I fail to see how this has anything to do with startups or hackers, but I've been wrong before. Raganwald's comment sums it up.
I found out about this place after someone else submitting one of my articles and have since submitted my own posts a few times simply because I felt they would be a good fit.
Using Google Apps with Outlook is a recipe for disaster. I use Google Apps IMAP (for local backups) via Apple Mail, Postbox, Swallow and other clients. I've never had the slightest issue.
On the other hand, I've supported IMAP users in Outlook and hated every second of it. Outlook generally is a mess when it comes to playing nice with other non-MS tools. For example, .ost files that fail to back up properly, etc. It's definitely 90% my ignorance of Outlook, but I can't be bothered to learn the nuances of Outlook when everything else just works. The other 10% is due to the Google vs. MS rivalry.
I realize you had no choice, given the client's use of a plug-in. I just wanted to point out that using Outlook with Google Apps is asking for trouble.
As for Imap, I don't really know what to say above what I wrote in that article - It is clear that Outlook is built for Exchange... That being said, I have one client (and myself) that runs IMAP from a Hmailserver box and have never had a problem.
Going over slow links/VPN when abroad has given me a lot of problems with Outlook, which I do not see whilst using a mobile device (I<device> or Android) when set to only download the last 50 messages - so, again, I agree that Outlook's handling could be a lot better.
But... On top of that, Gmail has just given me so many problems weather using Oulook, Thunderbird or a few other mail clients. If you only use Gmail through their website, it works great - but, I personally think that the way they use labels instead of folders along with a few other things (deletion etc.) made a mess when they tried to implement the IMAP protocol.