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Why not have email in Windows Home Server?

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An often asked question by some of the more advanced users of Windows Home Server has been "Why doesn't it include built in support for hosting my own email on it?"

The are two primary reasons, the most important being the fact that most users simply didn't want it.

Back in 2004 or so when the skunkworks project that eventually became Windows Home Server first was getting rolling, various studies were performed to best understand what users really wanted and expected from a Home Server.

Of those users with broadband internet connections (the target market for Windows Home Server) 86% were already "very satisfied" with their existing email which is pretty significant considering that when you broke down what services respondents were using, about ~50% of those using their provided ISP account, while another ~50% another uses one of the major web mail providers (Hotmail, Gmail, etc). Note that these two groups are not mutually exclusive as there company email and existing vanity domain based email and there still exists plenty of room for overlap.

Back then For those who want email on their own vanity domain one would have to contract with a company for web hosting and get the email included or use a straight email provider, both of which would likely cost them a few bucks per month. If they wanted a more advanced mail server (like Exchange) they would likely pay significantly more.

Now though, with services like Windows Live Admin Center (formerly known as Windows Live Custom Domains)... you can use Hotmail and all of the spam fighting and organizational tools it provides for free as the back-end for your own custom domain, all you have to do is provide the domain name and an MX record... which is a good thing if your home network ever goes down.

Practically speaking... consider this hypothetical case:

Imagine you have a house/apartment fire and on your way out, after making sure the kids and spouse are out the door ahead of you, and that the dog and cat are safe, you stop to grab your Windows Home Server knowing that even if the desktops and laptops go, you'll have all of the files and backups you need... what then?

Even if your home isn't a complete loss, you may not be able to setup your email serving Windows Home Server there again right away due to the possibility of water damage or electrical issues. Where do you run your server in the mean time? The in laws house? The hotel room? Tethered to your cell phone?

These are the kinds of issues that the average data center and/or enterprise has to think about in order to provide a given level of reliability and is not something a Home Server owner, even an advanced one should have to think about to ensure that they can keep sending and receiving email.

This is part of why the Azure Services Platform and related Live Services are so interesting to watch as time goes on as it simplifies so much of the complexity behind having multiple data center class reliability and availability and while there certainly are aspects of a product like Windows Home Server that could take advantage of 'cloud services', it is unlikely that that it will ever be fully replaced by such a platform.

Lets face it, services like Live Mesh is great... but it *only* gives you 5 gigs in the cloud for free. Why be limited to 5 gigs when I can have 5 TB on my Home Server for just a few dollars more and possibly replicate a subset of those files (my most important ones) to the cloud?

Above I said there were two reasons... the second is that there is already a Microsoft server product which is almost as easy to use as Windows Home Server and provides email... it's called Windows Small Business Server 2008 which not only has email through Exchange, but SharePoint, Forefront, SQL Server, WSUS and far far more and is intended those customers and businesses who want the kind of on premises services like email, which as I said is less the case with Windows Home Server users.

Sure SBS 2008, it doesn't do everything Windows Home Server can... sometimes though two boxes/products/services/etc are required instead of one, just as we've seen with Windows Home Server's 10 PC and 10 user limit.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 13, 2009
    In reading the last two paragraphs, I was struck by how wrong they sound.  To me, the better question is, "Why is SBS 2008 not a growth path for Windows Home Server without having to lose Windows Home Server functionality?"To me, if I am forced to lose great functionality to gain some other and unrelated functionality, then I am not looking at a growth path.Windows Home Server is fantastic and a wonderful product; for what it is.  The same can be said for SBS 2008, but there is too much Windows Home Server functionality given up to move to SBS 2008.Maybe the next version of SBS will catch up or maybe it will be the version after the next version.  Either way, moving to SBS 2008 from Windows Home Server is not a valid growth path.

  • Anonymous
    March 13, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2009
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    March 15, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2009
    I agree that the typical WHS consumer is going to keep using their web hosted email system.  As an Office Live customer, I couldn't be happier with the arrangement.  I have 2 consultants working from their home offices..I don't want them hitting WHS for email.  Besides, I already have them hitting for VOIP.  I'm running 3CX's IPPBX phone system ontop of WHS.  It works great and it is currently more cost effective compared to hosted PBX services.  For our home...its all about entertainment.  So I hope WHS team concentrates on this and extending WHS to services like Live Mesh.I have to respond to your comment "Lets face it, services like Live Mesh is great... but it only gives you 5 gigs in the cloud for free. Why be limited to 5 gigs when I can have 5 TB on my Home Server for just a few dollars more and possibly replicate a subset of those files (my most important ones) to the cloud?".  I hope that the WHS team sees "extending" WHS rather than "replicating" data as the key opportunity.  Sure there is already WHS provided remote access.  But I think the key will be to integrate WHS into Live Mesh so that Live Mesh simply has access to everything on WHS.  Then Live Mesh can act on the specified folders and/or files accordingly.  For example, lets say you want to search music.  Live Mesh could do federated searches against the WHS search subsystem and display results in Live Mesh desktop.  Then using Live Mesh Media Player, you could simply select the remote file and stream the content from WHS.  Something like this would make WHS a powerful adjunct device to Live Mesh.  Without it, Live Mesh & Live SkyDrive threaten WHS roadmap.

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2009
    ..also, the WHS team shouldn't assume that Live Mesh will be fixed at 5GB.  I can see a annual subscription for 50GB,100GB.  Though I doubt we'll see TB offerings in the next 5 years.Something the WHS, Windows Live teams might be interested in looking at is Microsoft Research project "Social Desktop".http://www.on10.net/blogs/laura/TechFest-Social-Desktop/

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2009
    my final post...I believe WHS relevance increases with laptop/netbook marketshare.  I wish laptop manufacturers would focus on incorporating highspeed & ultra efficient SSD drives instead of stuffing them with ever larger 250GB+ hard drives.  This is something that WHS OEM/Partner team might want to champion.  Perhaps one day we'll see WHS OEMs offer a free netbook with WHS purchase.  Or perhaps a WHS bundled with an extender is on the horizon.

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2009
    Allan, why limit your calendar and contacts to just your Home Server? Based on what I said in the main post... would it be preferred to have the data stored in the cloud and possibly aggregated down to the local lan? Newbee-WHS, you raise a very good point, the word server has many connotations depending on who you are and what your tech background is, something we encountered in our early market research. JohnCz #1, you are absolutely right, we definitely want to extend the Mesh experience and not just replace it outright... partially because Windows Home Server is a great place for some aspects of some of the services you described to live in part... but also because we (the Home Server team) don't have the engineering resources to do everything they have... only better. #2, I agree that there is absolutely the possibility for more storage on Mesh... however it's important to temper such optimism based on hard disk sizes with the cold reality of business... paying for it all. While the likes of Hotmail, Gmail and others are eager to give you oodles of storage space for your mail in the cloud, they do it so as to give you more reason to go to their websites and see the ads that pay for those services... Mesh doesn't have a similar business model (as far as I am aware), instead of being a way to get eyes to a site, they are a backend technology that will likely have to be monetized in some way at one point. #3, feel free to post all you want :) On pushing SSD over spinals for hard drives in laptops... I don't think this would be something the Windows Home Server OEM/Partner team would push per se... but I do think that there is definitely pushing going on from the market as a whole given the rapidly expanding sizes of SSD and their decreasing costs. As far as "Buy a home server and get a ____ for free"... that's an interesting idea... and given that some OEMs like HP and now Acer are both in the net book and Windows Home Server markets... here's hoping they are listening... though from the looks of it, Acer is pushing a better together sort of thing in Japan right now.

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2009
    Until we (or one of our partners) perfects backing up family members to ones Home Server... yes... here's hoping Microsoft Research is close on this.

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    March 15, 2009
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    March 15, 2009
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    March 15, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2009
    Where is the announced Foundation Edition Server going to fit?Its been mentioned at a $200 price point, to be released in a month or so.Bikeman

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    March 16, 2009
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    March 16, 2009
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    March 16, 2009
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