"Coca-Cola and Nokia are among Microsoft customers who've made "commitments" to online collaboration"

I would have thought large companies were smarter than this... I guess I was wrong, lol

...to read a feature comparison with the likes of 01.com, to whom I pay $6.99/mo per user for their excellent Zimbra-based hosted business e-mail service.

Linux + Evolution + IMAP + Zimbra webmail is a great combination. 01.com's BES solution is going into beta shortly, which should round off the suite nicely.

When I moved IMAP hosting last year (from Runbox, whose IMAP support was flaky at best) there weren't that many well-regarded hosted IMAP solutions available.

I don't yet trust Google with my business data - too much beta and they never seem terribly keen to support migrating data off their services.

Does this mean our options for this kind of inexpensive, light-weight, long-range connectivity is either Microsoft or a company run by a guy who lets his kid ride a bicycle in the driveway while he has an unrepaired 15-foot hole in it?

Business decisions are always difficult like this.

...from the service offered now by simplymailsolutions.com, who provide both hosted Zimbra and Exchange services to individuals and small businesses, right up to dedicated Exchange servers for enterprises.

After a long time flitting between various free email providers, I now use their Zimbra solution (which sounds pretty much identical to the 01.com offering John Latham mentions, right down to the price) and I can't see myself moving away. Everything's synced everywhere from Evolution to my mobile phone to the web, calendar, contacts, tasks... it's bliss!

The difference is it's Microsoft and Microsoft partners.

Picture Microsoft and small company, call it QQOpenGarageCalMail (my apologies if that is a real company).

Lets' say QQOpenGarageCalMail has a 99.9% uptime and Microsoft has 99.5%.

Company G uses QQOpenGarageCalMail and company M uses Microsoft.

OK, something bad happens due to that downtime.

President of Company: "Staff person, explain this!"

Company G staff person: "I chose QQOpenGarageCalMail and they screwed up, what are you going to do?"

Company M staff person: "I chose Microsoft and they screwed up, what are you going to do?"

The M staffer has a higher probability of continued employment.

Add to this that Microsoft may very well do a better better job than QQOpenGarageCalMail (they have been in the hosted mail business quite

awhile now after all).

Also remember you need to explain these problems to customers.

Angel Bill because sometimes Microsoft does some good work.

Slum Lords United. Buy at $3 today and find they "raise the rent" in two months once they've gotten you hooked.

What Microsoft probably meant by Coca Cola was “Coca-Cola Enterprises” which is a wee piece of Coke that handles the bottling end of the corporation - NOT Coca-Cola corporate, the bulk of the business.

They tried this on at the SharePoint Conference 2008 claiming Coca Cola, when oops, they actually meant (shurely shome mistake?) “Coca-Cola Enterprises”.

Benefit of the doubt to MS, they NEVER put FUD into the market about anything or anyone...

Are you implying that people in the business world just accept that Microsoft causes problems and cost overruns? and that if you researched more when making your software decisions and chose a competitor that is 500% less likely to fail and presented these facts to your boss you are more likely to get fired, then going "its microsofts fault".

Your off your tree mate.

In case you are wondering about my maths its actually simple. 0.01% downtime is 1/5th 0.05% downtime.

You work for Microsoft??? or at least are dependant on selling stuff made by them.

Its easy to explain to customers that Microsoft is bloated overpriced resource hungry unreliable piece of crapware.

Just let them read BIll Gates' Email about windows XP.

http://gizmodo.com/5019516/classic-clips-bill-gates-chews-out-microsoft-over-xp

Bill Angel, as at least he says it how it is.

I recently retired from the largest investor owned utility in the US of A. My former company chose M$ because they viewed "the Vole" as having the best chance of providing long term services and products.

And yes, we took they crap, we put up with them for over two decades Virtually no enterprise products of non M$ origin were allowed because they were "unproven", lacked the proper business model (read that as low net worth), and such.

Sadly Anonymous Coward is ... spot on.