[sc:software-category ]Over the years I have used TechNet extensively in my professional life. The resources a subscription brought were invaluable to me. So why has Microsoft decided to kill it?
TechNet allowed me to run a test lab at home at a reasonable price. Allowing me to install and work with the latest products from Microsoft so I could be ready to implement them in my professional career. Microsoft of course claims you can do testing with eval or trails, but that just makes life so much harder.
Having a permanent test lab available means I can simply pull up an RDP session to my Exchange server or SQL server and find an answer to whatever question I might have. If instead I have to rebuild such an environment every 60 days that makes my life a lot harder.
I suspect it will become so much harder in fact I’ll not be bothered to do it, which means I’ll be less effective as a Microsoft resource and I’ll end up finding alternate software I don’t have to keep re-installing. Perhaps I’ll install MySQL instead of MS SQL. And since I don’t need Windows to install MySQL, perhaps I’ll install a Linux server to run it.
Who knows, maybe next time someone asks me what SQL server to install at work I’ll recommend MySQL instead of MS SQL.
The choice to kill TehcNet seems to be a very short sighted one on Microsoft’s part. Yes there is abuse of the program and over the years they’ve significantly reduced the number of licences available to subscribers, but I don’t think the solution was to simply end the program.
Perhaps they’ll change their mind… in the mean time perhaps I’ll see what MariaDB is like.
