Microsoft has verified that Software plus Service (S+S) and Software as a Service (SaaS) is proliferating into the market. Many Analysts are considering the IT Industry to be at an inflexion point. Internet/web and it's 'computing' generation are transforming the way businesses are doing IT. Digital lifestyles are changing our lives as consumers. We hear more and more from our partners that customers want accessibility and usability and they want it fast and easy. Technology trending indicates that businesses are losing confidence in their backup and recovery systems. Also slow downs in growth are producing less capital infusion. They're concerned more than ever about ROI. I talk to many many partners every day and it's encouraging that more of them are stepping up and educating themselves on Hosting Services to present their customers not only with options, but technological expertise. With Microsoft driving this forward in the industry, hosting and having that option for our partners will create more wins and trust in the relationship. Working in Business Development for a hosting services provider, I feel it's my duty to educate our partners and arm them with what they will need going forward to win more business, maintain existing business and keep customer relationships strong. It's encouraging to me to see that partners are starting to catch on to this.

Molly Burgess
GoIWx, Inc.
Business Development Manager - SIP Global Markets

Ever since I deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in our hosted environment, here at GOIWX, I have been dealing with an IIS 6.0 error that was causing multiple issues. I was receiving many repetitive event log ID's 6398, 6482, and 7076. The IIS Manager snap in would also not function correctly. Through trial and error i learned to reset IIS because there wasn't an available hotfix to address this problem at that time. In August 2008, a hot fix was available to address this problem, [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946517]. After installing this hotfix, everything was working fine... No more event log errors and the IIS manager was working all the time! Yay! Life as a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Admin just got a little bit easier. However, behind the scenes another problem was arising. I began to notice that the limited number of SharePoint document libraries and lists that I had mail enabled were no longer receiving mail. After rechecking all my SharePoint configurations and Active Directory permissions, i turned to the SMTP service installed on my MOSS server. Immediately, I noticed that Access tab of the properties page to the default SMTP server, was no longer configurable. I searched and search for answers and placed a call to Microsoft, but nothing was available at the time. I noticed many other people that installed KB946517 for their SharePoint Servers were having the exact same issues with their SMTP service. So i placed this issue on the back burner because as I mentioned earlier, I only had a limited number of document libraries and lists that actually had incoming mail. Recently, I revisited this issue and found a blog post [http://www.developersdex.com/asp/message.asp?p=2676&r=6218385] which addresses the secondary issue of the SMTP server that occurred from installing KB946517. It pointed to a hotfix [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950426]. Now with that installed SMTP and MOSS are happy!!

As with anything in IT you never know fully what can occur when patching a bug. Hopefully someone can benefit from my experiences. If you have to install KB946517 on your SharePoint Server, be prepared to also install KB950426.

Hopefully this is the end of this particular issue.

Ben Harwood
SharePoint Server Administrator
GOIWX

Labels: Fix, GOIWX, Hosted, Hosting, IIS, KB946517, KB950426, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, MOSS, SMTP

I have been talking with prospective partners of our model since 2007. The interest is overwhelming. Nobody has disagreed with Microsofts strategy that the world is going into the cloud. Partners have a range of educational questions, but at the end of the day most of them agree end customers will preserve cash, reduce costs and have improved service.


RJ Burgess