Comments

# Jeff said on November 14, 2007 3:27 PM:

For right now I would continue to offer hosting with Windows 2003 and IIS6 for the same price. Free doesn't really do it for offering hosting, we charge the same for *NIX and MS hosting. I don't think anyone cares if MS products are free or not but rather there is indisputable real-life performance differences that make it advantageous to not go forward with the latest and greats from MS anymore.  If MS wants to make things enticing, why not just offer ONE version of Office 2007 instead of eight? How about ONE version of Vista instead of six? This product level thing is confusing and irritating to say the least...

# klevereblog said on November 14, 2007 8:45 PM:

Its good to know that people are not just making a cost decision but are also comparing features and performance.  My team really tries to focus on driving awareness externally of the improvments and features that exist in the Windows Hosting Platform.  But we also take feedback back to the product teams especially about errors that we can improve and features that we can add.

Also I can't agree more with you about the multiple versions of office and Windows. I don't work for either of those teams so I don't have a good explaination for this.  But it can be confusig however.

# George Jetson said on November 15, 2007 9:19 AM:

I apologize, as my focus isn't really on hosting, but to the question in general...

I try to evaluate cost/benefit decisions (also in the build vs buy decision) in the context of the total cost of ownership (including integration costs, adaptability costs, etc.) and the total benefit of ownership (including comparative advantages, and the savings of scarce company resources that can't be altered in the short term by writing more checks, etc.)

I want the best long term configuration/platform, but that takes time ($$$$) to discover.  All else being equal, I like to lessen the costs incurred from managing multiple things.

And so from my perspective, even if Microsoft didn't charge, the product still wouldn't be free to me.  If I had perfect and complete knowledge, I would pick my best long-term options.  But I don't.  And so I guess I"ll conclude with the observation that while lowering licensing fees is a me/Microsoft win/lose proposition, lowering my incidental costs of discovery is a win/win proposition.

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