Upon my return from Las Vegas, some very, very compelling news was waiting for me in my inbox..."Security Rivals Shut Out Of Microsoft Meeting." Microsoft hosted an online meeting last Thursday using their very own "Live Meeting" solution to discuss Windows Vista with Symantec and McAfee among others. About 15 minutes into the presentation, the meeting crashed and Symantec and McAfee were unable to log back in.
"Microsoft hosted an online meeting this morning, but it never really got started," said Siobhan MacDermott, a McAfee spokeswoman. "Despite numerous attempts to reconnect, we were never able to get back into the meeting. However, we were notified that the meeting had ended."
Symantec had a similar experience, said Cris Paden, a company spokesman. "Our team was shut out, and only one person was able to get back in," he said.
Apparently the Live Meeting camp said they sent out "wrong" invites to all attendees. (They sent out invites out as presenters.)
I can understand that these crashes can happen as no technology is 100% perfect, however, one still needs to question the Live Meeting platform as it pertains to scalability, security, fault tolerance and performance. Perhaps the meeting crashed because the "wrong" invitations were sent out, seems a bit unlikely to me but who knows? The reality is that there is not one company out there that would take on that risk and want be in the sames shoes as Microsoft on Thursday. Who would want to handle all that heat? For small companies, a meeting crash like this with their respective partners or clients...not sure if they would be able to bounce back like Microsoft could. The damage to reputation and credibility of a small to mid-size company might not be repairable.
(Live Meeting is a very small piece of the Microsoft Product Suite as it it part of "Information Worker" Business Unit meaning it competes for resources and funding with Microsoft Office and Visio. Pretty tough competition within the same product family. One has to wonder about the liklihood of Live Meeting getting lost in the shuffle of all the other Microsoft products that actually contribute significantly to Microsoft's top line.)
In simplest form, perhaps the meeting crashed because the system could not accommodate all attendees. The smaller security-based companies apparently had no issues logging in so why were some of the companies like Symantec and McAfee unable to log in while others were?
"More than 20 partners successfully signed on and participated in the meeting," the Microsoft representative said.
Note to self, "This is a serious RED FLAG when evaluating Live Meeting."
Reuter's Article on the Microsoft Meeting Crash
Tech Republic Blog on Live Meeting
