Windows 8 and the move to the cloud

So, on Wednesday, I will be on a panel during the student affairs directors meeting.  So, the directors from all the units in Housing, the Career Center, Student Diversity Programs, CASA and others will have the opportunity to ask the Division Tech Committee about anything technical.

Expected topics:

• The move to VOIP
• Contract with HP/Zunesis
• Cellular phone contract status
• BYOD - Bring your own device (proliferation of devices and challenges of supporting them)
• Mac computer support

Today Matt started discussion, and I'm curious what readers think:

What do you LIKE and what do you DISLIKE about:

1. Google
2. Apple
3. Microsoft

CSU is a highly Microsoft environment.  I have macs in my labs, and as you can see, I use Android phone and Google for many documents and such.  But I agree that Microsoft makes a superior environment for business.

Case in point.  A student group wanted to advertise an event on our lab machine's desktop.  On Windows, I change the Group Policy and bam, it's changed on 50+ machines.  The macs don't change.  The macs would require me to have either pre-configured desktop to point to a specific spot, each individually (or imaged), or go around and change each one.

With powershell, I can make all the windows machines do whatever is necessary, whether it's stop popping up the Java Auto-update, apply a patch, or anything else.  Central management is a huge boon to busy domain administrators.

SO, BYOD is an off-shoot of this.  Shiny, happy applications and great new technology doing wonderful connected things.  I support this.  But to be able to learn, configure, and avoid security incidents  with a growing number of devices, well, there are not enough hours in the day.

And that is why I say, bring it on Microsoft.  Give me surface.  Make it work, and talk to domains, and be configurable from afar.  My favorite thing about Apple and Google?  Competition fosters innovation, and microsoft is moving to the cloud.  

CSU will probably join other schools in putting faculty and staff email in the cloud with either microsoft or google.  Students have been using google for email for years.  And, things will work better.

What do YOU think?

PS, see a ZDNET article for more discussion/background