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Welcome to IWETHEY!

New Good luck to them
Google Apps is an administrative nightmare. And if ancillary services like Google Voice and Youtube get involved, then you're completely up a creek without a paddle.

For the core services, reliable file sharing is either domain wide or on an individual basis. Neither option works beyond very small operations. Groups exist but have various problems, the biggest one being that permissions are sticky on the membership at the time an action was taken. (I.e. new members do not see files previously shared with the group while former members retain access to files shared while they were a member.)

Things get especially fun as people move in/out/around the organization.

We tried it a couple of years ago with ~150 users. I now pretend we never had it.
New Zooks! :-(
New That tells me that Group security was patched-on.
And patched-on badly when they should have implemented it properly.

Wade.
Just Add Story http://justaddstory.wordpress.com/
New There never was a plan, but they're not the only ones...
It just goes in whatever direction someone at Google thinks is fashionable at any given point in time. The best feature so far is that non-Google Drive stuffs get irrevocably deleted when the associated account is deleted and the admin has no clue there was anything there until the screaming starts. (Don't ask how I know that...)

But to reassure Ashton - MS is making great progress and is close to overtake Google:

We moved our student e-mail onto ExchangeLabs in 2009, then MS's fledgling attempt at a hosted Exchange service. Administration was clunky but to the end users, it worked just as well as the in-house Outlook Web Access we had before.

It was then upgraded to Exchange 2010 and became Outlook.com. The upgrade took > 3 months and was done per mailbox. But the admin could only touch mailboxes that were on the same version as the admin's own account. And the moderation feature broke... On the upside, the advent of Google Docs spurred MS into giving Outlook.com accounts access to the online Word and Excel applications and some online storage. Everything nicely integrated.

Then Hotmail was rolled into Outlook.com. Now you had to log in to outlook.com/your.domain as they are apparently unable to direct authentication based on the account name used (which is the full e-mail address, so that shouldn't have been too hard...)

Finally, last July, the big move to Office 365... First off, everyone got locked out of their account (recycled cookies and the "click here to fix this" link did not work.) Second, the bulk account import feature was broken beyond repair. Third, Office 365 comes without ... Office. To get those applications back, each user now needs to set up a separate, individual SkyDrive account.

And the separation is total: SkyDrive can not get to the Outlook.com address books and Outlook.com can not access any documents made with the online Office applications. Best part: SkyDrive can only e-mail download links to documents which the recipient then can not access without a separate invitation :-/ And even if they do get in: they can't download the document. Work wonders in a school, that...

Fred Tuttle, please come back!!
New Horrorshow. :-( Thanks for that last sentence! :-)
New I think Google has a love-hate relationship with corporates.
Where I work, we've moved all our email and a lot of our shared documents onto Google. We are a large company, so Google is undoubtedly making a small mint off us.

Now, I am just an end-user, with only as much management access as any individual account can ever has. We still have weird problems with who can see and/or modify documents. It simply seems tuned for owners of documents to delegate access, which would make sense given Google Drive wasn't originally created to be a corporate product. The more individual-centric access happens to match our culture, but it would be a problem if it didn't.

I now have four Google accounts: my work one, my one gmail one, one I made for G+ and my Youtube one. I know Youtube users kicked up a long and loud stink about merging their YT accounts into Google (I put off converting mine as long as I could) and Google eventually responded by adding multiple account support in YT. Interestingly, Gmail support for multiple accounts took longer to be polished. Multiple accounts for the predecessor to Google Drive was even later.

I know people who don't understand why anyone would want multiple Google Accounts. I'm convinced even most of Google doesn't understand this and probably would prefer everyone has just one and only one. But I'm betting corporate accounts will not stop insisting on multiple account support. And because they get paid for those, they have to keep the feature.

Wade.
Just Add Story http://justaddstory.wordpress.com/
New I have 8 personal GMails and 1 work
Since most of these are mail drops (IWETHEY admin, various Apple dev accounts, and so on) it's not difficult for me to manage, but I agree that Google really doesn't understand corporate. Of course, they don't really seem to understand retail either, but that's a different problem. :-)
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New Yep
They love the corporate money.

They hate doing the dreary work required to make GApps suitable for the enterprise.
New Fascinating + Confusing.. that's fun--but only at parties.
(Love these logic-Mystery Shows.. if they don't go too-far beyond my simple powers to notice an '8'
in an ostensibly octal program.. I can sometimes get to the 'cream of the jest'.

Not sure I have a handle on the time/tense of your clear exposition of defects. The biz Dueling-Behemoths report I stumbled onto
gave no inklings of these er, back-stories. Devil/details.
Are you saying that, right >now< the 'MO's of these two giant Corps are: ~~

A) (If) Google has 'a Plan', then, also too:
there is no controlling hierarchy? such that random (ostensibly IT-savvy) individuals get to act as-if:
deviations from the Plan are OK to experiment-with: Live! (?)
[Your example being: data irretrievably lost--unless backed-up completely, locally?--or, Period.]

B) [Assumption: ..making great progress and is close to overtake Google is a report from The Onion.]
MS has rolled out a series of incomplete/incompletely-tested procedures, each of which has one or more illogical-Gotchas
(or complete omissions of key data exchange capabilities): preventing useful work getting done.
Even by Insanely-innovative IT folks (many left screaming along with Users.)
(Your specific examples suggest an amateur maze-constructor who has, on his first job in the Estate's Garden Showpiece:
constructed many beautiful paths; unfortunately not one of these circuitous path leads to --> the Cheese.)

I couldn't know if the screw-ups you cite have been 'fixed' in the aggregate, since?
But it sounds like: Both A) and B) mega-Corporations' 'Plans' are, in actuality, simply FUBAR.
And, it would seem that--for mentioned purposes--there is NO fully-functioning Corp C)
--from whom you CAN order: with any assured possession of ... A Working Plan (!?)

(Ami~~Right, Sir?)
Alas though: does this predicament not resemble many other FUBARS across the gamut of Federal/State/Local "operations" in general,
as-of 1-8-14 in the dis-United States?


Scariest thought: Jeez! ... had I chosen IT to be my lifelong burden way-back ... when I suicided ...
would I have taken Anyone with me?
Hint: it is now legal to produce/sell pot, Out There.. {sigh}


New Close
Google products started as private-use tools and grew up into the corporate space. And just like early MS products, if multi-user access and rational access control is an afterthought, it's not going to work well.

MS on the other hand has been in the corporate space long enough that they have security/access baked in from a very early point. So when they cause you pain it's because they've decided they want you to change your workflow to match their new preferred business model du jour.

Shorter: Google's culture doesn't understand why you'd want to do that. MS's culture understands, but doesn't care.
--

Drew
New Shorter is better :-)
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 58 years. meep
New Not just MS.
One of my first jobs, in the late '80s, was working with a technical writer at a small firm that wrote banking software. They were just starting to look into hypertext systems to create a help system for the tellers and bankers who would be using it. I was tasked with entering lots of ill-defined text and creating the links. You can imagine how well hypertext worked on Windows 2.x running on 286 systems...

I mentioned it to one of the managers there...

"This is unbelievably slow!"

"That's great! That means they'll have to buy faster computers from us too!!"

:-/

MS does the minimum possible to counteract their competition, and always does it in a way to most-effectively lock in their users while making them buy new hardware to "take advantage" of the new "features". Other companies are infected with the same disease.

Fortunately, with the rise of ARM, this business model (at least under MS's leadership) is slowly dying.

Cheers,
Scott.
New ARM the CPU architecture?
How does this circumvent MS's business model?
--

Drew
New It's where all the growth is, and no MS tax.
Yeah, it's an Apple tax (or maybe a Google tax) instead. And I'm over-stating things a bit. But ARM CPUs are the only thing that have broken MS's (and Intel's) stranglehold on consumer computing. UNIX didn't do it. DESQview didn't do it. OS/2 didn't do it. Linux didn't do it. SteamOS didn't do it. ;-)

SJVN on Win8 adoption rate, etc., from last June - http://www.zdnet.com...-fail-7000016222/

Cheers,
Scott.
New Neat, hadn't heard about that
I like the mention that Ubuntu has closed Bug #1.
--

Drew
New Re: ARM the CPU architecture?
Yeah, it's not like my 1020's got an ARM processor, or anything.

Oh, wait.
New Seems like MS doesn't care even if you do.
http://www.theregist...oft_arm_adoption/
New I think your argument is from ten years ago.
For example, Exchange works great on Android and iOS devices.

MS aren't interested in selling you hardware, unless it's a Surface.

And Windows 8 runs better on the same hardware than Windows 7.

You can do better than this, Scott.
New ..__--oo000oo--__..
MS's good stuff is desperation and a poison apple to try to lock people in again.

E.g. the always-net-connected Xbox One.
http://www.ign.com/w...Online_Connection

The Xbox One was originally marketed by Microsoft as requiring a constant connection to the internet, with offline intervals greater than 24 hours disabling key features. Games were intended to be continually connected to the cloud, and many would not function without an active link to the web.


They have tried, many times, to introduce various toll-gates on the internet, in advertising, in on-line payments, and elsewhere. E.g. threatening people who are using FAT - http://www.neowin.ne...idates-fat-patent . E.g. attempting to lock-down the bootup sequence in new PCs in ways that Linux can effectively be shut out - http://www.wired.com...ows8-secure-boot/

Yes, WinPhone runs on ARM. Yes MS has some ARM tablets. Yes something called Win8 will run on ARM. All of them have tiny market shares on ARM. And them doing some things to open up their products and giving out some open source stuff doesn't mean that their management culture has changed very much.

MS is very much interested in selling stuff other than "Surface" - Xbox One, Nokia phones, Nokia tablets, and probably Nokia/MS Watches/Glasses/etc. as soon as they figure out how to do it in a way that is sorta compelling in spite of being years late. They know that desktop PCs running Winders is an evolutionary dead end and they have to do something - they just are being slaughtered in the marketplace with their non-Intel offerings.

MS could be a great company. They've got the money, they've got the knowledge, they've got the patents and IP. They've got lots of good people. But they're hamstrung by management that should have retired about 15 years ago - management that still wants to crush competitors using any hammer they can find. Fortunately for us, the hammers they have been able to find are rather smushy. They learned all the wrong lessons from their Win3 and killing OS/2 successes and didn't learn much of anything new until it was too late.

It'll be interesting to see if things change when Ballmer finally leaves.

KJust my $0.02. :-)

Cheers,
Scott.
Expand Edited by Another Scott Jan. 9, 2014, 06:14:18 PM EST
New MS really, really don't care about Linux on PCs
In line with the vast majority of people on Earth.

They're far more bothered about getting certifications for secure platforms for lucrative gubmint contracts, I should imagine.

As a business manager, why would you ever give a crap about expending any engineering effort on stymying the installation of an OS that's run by 1% (2% on a good day) of users?

So they've exercised their patents? So what? Google do that, despite their "don't be evil" bollocks strapline. Apple do that all the time. As does every company with a patent lawyer.

You assume they're not "doing something" when in fact for the past few years they've been considerably diversifying their boring invisible stuff, like the Exchange platform (there's nothing better for tedious corporate messaging), their Azure cloud wossname (right up there with Amazon S3) and making metric fucktons of money out of Office with the 365 subscription offering (millions of subs sold, very well received, excellent vee eff emm), not to mention that SQL server continues to be less annoying than Oracle to manage (even if Oracle does have an performance and flexibility edge, although I'm going to have to admit that I've studiously avoided databases of all kinds for the past five years or so), and Visual Studio is what a lot of programmers like to use. I'm going to cautiously say that SharePoint is a good thing, because they sell lots of it, but our work SharePoint site is a massive pain in the arse and I hate it.

Acting as though MS are The Evil Empire when you've got a world that has Apple and Google in it - both of whom do a great deal to lock you into their ecosystems - is a bit weird tbh.

And SAP. Jesus. SAP.
New Linus probably doesn't care much about Linux on PCs either.
;-)

http://www.linux.com...-on-theeverything

Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation:

In the Linux community we love predicting that this is the year of Linux in cars, or in gaming, or yes, even the desktop.

But in fact, this was the year of Linux in everything. From smartphones, tablets, consumer appliances and cars, to the open cloud and high-performance computers, to gaming platforms and more, Linux was, and is, literally everywhere. It’s the software that is running our lives.


Technology marches on. The Secure Boot stuff could have been a good idea but MS thought they could use it to protect Winders market share. It's not working.

You may be right about the other stuff - I've got no special knowledge. But lots of people have made lots of money betting against MS since 2000 - https://www.google.c...zPUtjEJbC60AGt7gE (of course Apple has put them all to shame. ;-)

Enjoy! :-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New Re: Linus probably doesn't care much about Linux on PCs eith
It's pure speculation that the motivation for Secure Boot was to protect Windows market share.

Given that the biggest threat to Windows is, well, (old versions of) Windows - i.e. inertia - and given that old versions of Windows don't really run too well, if at all, on modern PCs (finally, at last, thank fuck for that, driver support for XP is falling off a cliff) - protect it against what, precisely?

Apple since 2000 is a once-in-a-lifetime company. You cannot help but be impressed - but I'm not sure that in the wider context it's healthy for the industry (or the economy) for a company to be sitting on that much cash.
New Re: Linus probably doesn't care much about Linux on PCs eith
1) Agreed. I've got no special knowledge.

2) Dunno. MS (and Intel) could have used an open process for Secure Boot that Linux distros could have participated in as an equal (without paying huge fees or having a process that is prohibitively expensive - http://www.zdnet.com...-and-fedora/11187 ). It wouldn't have made it less secure (probably would have made it more secure). They didn't.

3) Agreed. Every company should be forbidden from having huge war chests like that. And their profits should be taxed sensibly. And management and director pay should be limited to some reasonable multiple of minimum/average employee pay. And... But those thing aren't going to happen with a Republican House.

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Ah I C: takes lots fewer words when you already know several
of the back-stories and: that those converge, on pure-pithiness like
Google's culture doesn't understand why you'd want to do that. MS's culture understands, but doesn't care.

Shall try to stifle future naive efforts to comprehend more than a touch of this involuted/convoluted industry;
I Mean: an 'industry' founded upon clear/workable ... massive! results: from Boolean Logic/applied.

And yet.. an even enhanced-version of normal biz dissembling, anti-factual koans and just pure fabrications! ... Rulez.
And Not merely the internal zeitgeist, but apparently: there's almost an algorithm for mis-information-Development (?)

It is Indeed--much worse than my simple mind could guesstimate. Dunno HOW youse guys daily interface
among the know-little-Suits, the know-more $-motivated S/W purveyors, the bald-faced obtuse
and: somehow manage to keep a present System functioning ... in whatever time you have Left? for that.

(Anyway, thanks for clearing-up the funny-but-devastatingly Cynical er, Real Mission (non-)Statements
of merely TWO of these Too-big Not-to Lie mega-Corps.)
It's no wonder that mere 'government' could not possibly peel away the onion-layers far enough
to 'Regulate' any aspect of this jello-nailed-to-a-Wall of premeditated obfuscation.

Hey!! Save Grey Cells! (they're all that's really-You)
Get. Out.


(I'll stick more to quantum electrodynamics.. it's simpler, amidst the first ten unfathomable topics.)

New No special insight here
Just treat a company as a person and listen to what they say. What's the most-likely explanation? What story would they be telling themselves that would make them say what they're saying?
--

Drew
New That's a useful start, but..
aren't these Mission-things always a committee+boilerplate contrived Statement?

(I Mean: look at the bible--those various 'corrections' across the centuries: committees all!)
And rarely it seems, is there actually a bug er fly-on-wall whereby you can give credence to a summary via hearing how they talk to each other.
(Sometimes we get lucky, of course; someone jabbers under the influence of Affluenza and: we get an uncensored hint.)

{sigh} In an 'information-based' New-world ... we're starving.
New Oh, I don't *believe* what they say
It's a combination of taking user requirements and reading code.

* Users rarely know what they need, and when they do they're likely to tell you something that they think will get them what they think they want.

* When reading stupid code, I try to figure out, "What non-stupid reason would lead someone to do this?"

Everyone has reasons for what they do, reasons that make sense to them.
--

Drew
New Great description of what I (try to) do
http://www.ribbonfar...dan-kartik-keith/
The act of refactoring is a revisiting, an attempt at understanding the pathways of thought that led to a particular result, and experiments in improving upon it. This is a sort of temporally-displaced empathy, putting yourself in past-you’s shoes, or in the shoes of prior wayfarers. Choices that may appear perverse or horrifying from the outside may be found, on reflection, to be less unreasonable than first thought, as the technical limitations, skill limitations, or political constraints upon the original solution come to light. (The reverse may instead be true; choices you thought noble may turn out to have been thoroughly venal).

--

Drew
New Re: Fascinating + Confusing.. that's fun--but only at partie
A) Google's plan was to come up with something that could threaten MS and succeeded: Office competition backed by Big Money. And that is where the plan ended. Everything that has happened since has been driven by other desires, like Google+. I'm sure there's a plan behind each and everyone, but the one plan to rule them all still seems to be stuck in a cave somewhere.

B) It could be the Onion, but the original went more like "Capitalism is on the verge of the abyss! - Socialism is about to surpass capitalism!" ;-)
As to fixing the fubars, not them (e.g. we've hacked their Exchange 2010 PowerShell provisioning scripts to work with Office 365 :-)

Oh, and if you ever thought their error messages were obtuse before:
Exchange: An unknown error has occurred. Refer to correlation ID: 58956271-ca6f-49e9-9ea9-1e5b9b0e7e72

Good luck with that...
New Rofl. :-)
New Hey! that's a Good error message..
Instead of 5 or 7 refs to The Knowledge Base, where different-dated and verbose/arcane mis-directions eat hours:
there's just One (albeit lengthy) ref that eats hours. In an updated-stochastic manner.

(Natch I also had no luck with trying to find M$'s Unknown Errors Listing, either ;-) but to be fair, if it's the AMA talking:
when they Don't Know, they just append an -itis to the symptom-source, and a prefix like: non-specific vaginitis [actual sample.]

Thanks for more clarification about the simple recess-playground-bully mindsets of the Armani-suited.
(In civics they never/ever mentioned! that lots of official-adults remain little-boys forever.)
Nice you could do a lateral arabesque; that must have felt almost as good as 5 min of Face-time with the ex-Ballmer with a spray-can of whipped cream (?)

     Google -vs- Beast ... exchanging Exchange expeditiously - (Ashton) - (31)
         Good luck to them - (scoenye) - (30)
             Zooks! :-( -NT - (Another Scott)
             That tells me that Group security was patched-on. - (static) - (28)
                 There never was a plan, but they're not the only ones... - (scoenye) - (27)
                     Horrorshow. :-( Thanks for that last sentence! :-) -NT - (Another Scott)
                     I think Google has a love-hate relationship with corporates. - (static) - (2)
                         I have 8 personal GMails and 1 work - (malraux)
                         Yep - (pwhysall)
                     Fascinating + Confusing.. that's fun--but only at parties. - (Ashton) - (22)
                         Close - (drook) - (18)
                             Shorter is better :-) -NT - (boxley)
                             Not just MS. - (Another Scott) - (11)
                                 ARM the CPU architecture? - (drook) - (4)
                                     It's where all the growth is, and no MS tax. - (Another Scott) - (1)
                                         Neat, hadn't heard about that - (drook)
                                     Re: ARM the CPU architecture? - (pwhysall) - (1)
                                         Seems like MS doesn't care even if you do. - (crazy)
                                 I think your argument is from ten years ago. - (pwhysall) - (5)
                                     ..__--oo000oo--__.. - (Another Scott) - (4)
                                         MS really, really don't care about Linux on PCs - (pwhysall) - (3)
                                             Linus probably doesn't care much about Linux on PCs either. - (Another Scott) - (2)
                                                 Re: Linus probably doesn't care much about Linux on PCs eith - (pwhysall) - (1)
                                                     Re: Linus probably doesn't care much about Linux on PCs eith - (Another Scott)
                             Ah I C: takes lots fewer words when you already know several - (Ashton) - (4)
                                 No special insight here - (drook) - (3)
                                     That's a useful start, but.. - (Ashton) - (1)
                                         Oh, I don't *believe* what they say - (drook)
                                     Great description of what I (try to) do - (drook)
                         Re: Fascinating + Confusing.. that's fun--but only at partie - (scoenye) - (2)
                             Rofl. :-) -NT - (Another Scott)
                             Hey! that's a Good error message.. - (Ashton)

Diane's as fat can be... aye, Captain aye!
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