News
The Bell Tolls for BackOffice
Microsoft perennial is about to be decommissioned, as Redmond consigns
BackOffice to the software scrap-heap at the end of September.
According to Cynthia Sample, Microsoft's group product manager for the
.NET enterprise server line, BackOffice is a concept that's outlived its
usefulness. "We've done a lot of research on what users are using [BackOffice]
for," Sample said. "When BackOffice first came out, all the server products
came out with it, but since then we've shipped seven or eight new products,
so it doesn't include everything anymore; it also doesn't include access
to the Web."
Sept. 28 is the last day BackOffice will be for sale, Sample said. "But
it's not as if the products are going away. The customer will still be
able to get all the server products," just not in the BackOffice suite.
Another change is the licensing structure. A number of customers bought
BackOffice because of its SQL license, which is expensive to buy as a
stand-alone. With the elimination of BackOffice, Microsoft is switching
to something called a core CAL, which includes some server products, but
not SQL.
This has some folks grumbling, but Sample said the SQL CAL upgrade pricing
didn't change from 1994 through SQL 7.0, and even though SQL 2000 is more
expensive, it's still cheaper than Oracle.
So, like it or not, things could be changing for BackOffice users at
the end of September.
Things won't change, however, for BackOffice's little brother, Small
Business Server. SBS, which includes Win2K Server, Exchange 2000 Server,
ISA Server 2000 and SQL Server 2000 among other components, is doing well
in its niche. The next version's release date hasn't been set yet by Microsoft,
but it's widely believed to be mid-2002. It's code-named "Bobcat."