Dan Griffin's Blog

Comments on security, PKI, smart cards, cryptography, and entrepreneurship.

DirectAccess IPD guide

September 15, 2009

Microsoft’s Infrastructure Planning and Development guide for DirectAccess is now available in Beta form, the intent being to solicit feedback. Having already crossed this bridge myself, I recommend taking this opportunity to read the guide and ask questions if you think you may find yourself tasked with investigating, deploying, or integrating with DirectAccess. It’s a complex, albeit compelling, technology (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it’s a compelling application of several complex technologies).

What is DirectAccess? Well, I won’t be able to do it better justice than this TechNet video. But briefly it’s an always-connected roaming user solution for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

One additional observation, since the developers in the audience may be asking, “I’m not an IT guy; why should I care?” Because developers should be writing their software to (a) operate securely regardless of whether it’s behind a firewall, (b) smoothly transition between connected and disconnected states, and (c) be compatible with IPv6.

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The link is here. Supposedly, you can get new Small Business Server 2008 systems from Dell and HP for $1300, which isn’t bad. Two caveats, though:

  1. Depending on the number of users, and whether you’ll be running Exchange and SharePoint, 4 GB of RAM may not be enough.
  2. What we need is a decision matrix for customers who are, or who should be, considering hosted (i.e. outsourced/offsite) Exchange and SharePoint, as opposed to running everything onsite. I’m a fan of the hosted option, since it reduces the IT support burden that is inevitably borne at least partially by the customer.
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Smart & Simple Strategies for Small Business, presented by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and Microsoft, is taking place next Wednesday. I’ll be there, speaking on the security panel!

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Here’s an interesting whitepaper (funded by IBM) comparing IBM’s Lotus Foundations product to Microsoft Small Business Server. The actual comparison points start half-way down page eight.

The main takeaway for me is how refreshing it is for Microsoft to have a credible, direct competitor in that space. SMB size customers can only benefit from this.

However, the obvious purpose of that whitepaper aside, comparing Foundations to SBS is missing the point from the perspective of today’s SMB business decision makers. Both products are geared toward offering a hodgepodge of onsite services, few of which are required by a typical customer. And the key features - file management and email - are better outsourced.

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Check out the latest Visual Studio marketing intro video on microsoft.com. Click in the middle of the Silverlight control where it says, “Come on in”. Watch the 1-minute video. I’m at the end, and I say something like, “It’s alive …”

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