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SaaS - Microsoft way -- H M C 4.0

Microsoft offers its Crown Jewel MS-Exchange 2007 and Windows Sharepoint Services as Hosted Messaging and Collaboration Solution.

This is a incrimental development of products for Service providers like MS - Internet Services, HMC 3.5 with Exchange 2003....

This solution requires eloborate Hardware and Software Infrastructure covering almost all server products from Microsoft Stable.

MS-SQL Server
MoM -SCoM
Active Directory - CDI
ISA
SharePoint
Provisioning System

I fail to understand, why do we need such diverse set of software products to run an already complex mail platform like Exchange in a multi-tenent mode...

It not only increases the exposure in terms of complexity but also results in skills shortage to run such a diverse environment.

A Seemingly simple deployment tool has so much depth to it that, If we end up making any mistake...it will lead to a long and unanticipated delay....

The some portions of supported software platform do not run on the Latest 64bit windows servers.

The setup forces us deploy critical infrastucture like MS-SQL on a 32 bit platform due to nuan ces of Microsoft Provisioning Framework and .NET version limitations.

Our team has implemented HMC about 4 times till now, There are new uncertinities that are cropping up in the 5th install cycle...

In the name of making the deployment and multi-tenency easy...We are seeing that the HMC framework is ending up to be brittle...

Inspite of all this, I should hail to HMC as a very spirited effort to simplify the Service Provider operations.

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