More on the Microsoft-Connectix deal

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CNET on Microsoft's migration plan after their deal with Connectix:

The server software drove the deal, said analysts, and will play a key role in helping Microsoft to attract users of its aging Windows NT 4 server operating system to Windows Server 2003, slated to debut on April 24.

So that's another point for their interest in the virtualization feature. Now the interesting bit of this article lies in a quote from a certain DeMichillie, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft:

"Microsoft is taking a lot of flak from Oracle through ads that say they can consolidate Exchange better than Microsoft can. Microsoft looks at Connectix as a way to run more Exchange Servers on a single Window (sic) server."

For our readers who don't dig Windows (with an s), Exchange is Microsoft's email server and is famous for its inability to scale well (that's what the trolls who look after our email server in the basement keep telling me, and we all know the story about Hotmail). What DeMichillie is telling us here is that running multiple copies of Exchange under multiple instances of Windows Server on top of a virtual PC stack is more efficient than having a single instance of Exchange running alone.

Ahem, tell me about optimization and scalability. Here in the big IT business it's a known fact that IT is not an exact science. But we're not supposed to make it so obvious to world+dog!