There has been much talk about the penetration of consumer technologies into the business world. Most of it has focused on the negative: how iPods and USB Flash drives will slurp all the confidential files from your network; how blogs and instant messaging are potential sources of data leaks. But the flip side of the coin is that enterprises can also gain from consumer technology.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been playing around with RC1 of Microsoft’s Windows Home Server (WHS) software. Announced at the beginning of this year, WHS is actually a version of Windows Server 2003 with a consumer makeover. It’s intended, fairly obviously, for home users and will ship either as a pre-installed package or as a DIY option for the more adventurous enthusiasts.
It’s primarily designed to make the backup and restore of PCs on a home network a painless task, and it does this very well with some smart backup technologies, including Single Instance Store and a storage balancing system called Drive Extender. Most home users never get round to backing their data up properly – perhaps an odd CD or DVD with some important files every now and again, but a rigorously implemented daily, weekly and monthly regime? I certainly never get round to it, even though I should know better.
What really prompted me to discuss this product here is the emphasis the designers have had to place on simplicity. One of the reasons home PCs don’t get backed up is that backup software is often impenetrable, requiring you to know all about differential and incremental backups, partitions, disk images and all the other jargon that makes people’s eyes glaze over.
The genius of WHS is that it’s powerful technology designed for use by idiots. By default, a proper backup regime is silently and automatically performed on a daily, weekly and monthly schedule, with automatic cleanup done every week. There’s an administration console that lets you manage the basics of WHS, but the underlying Server 2003 operating system is well hidden. It can even set up a web site for remote access to files and computers.
So why can’t products designed for corporate use be just as easy to get up and running? Where along the technology road did it somehow become a negative point to give a product an interface that a child can use?
If WHS eventually starts appearing in offices and workgroups – and I suspect it may – this would be one case where consumer technology isn’t something to fear, but to embrace with open arms.
