So the string between Elizabeth and Mhystique clearly displays the disfunction that summarizes the release of BE 2012. On August 28th, Elizabeth posted "...If you want to get this early, please sign up for the Beta program, this will be in the beta release....", and later the same day, the user she was addressing (Mhystique) responded with "And how do I sign up for that?". To the amazement of I'm sure all that cared to read the thread, the response from Elizabeth on that same day was "Mhystique,
Unfortunalty the multi-server usability testing was all last week. I have to cut things off so I can take the results and get the changes needed back to our developers to work on.
I will have other opportunities for other usability sessions in the future.
Regards... Elizabeth".
Did I miss something here? How do you suggest to a user to join a beta group, then the same day tell them it's too late because you need to get the 'results' back to developers. Too bad those 'results' don't include the input from the person that was encouraged to sign up for the beta group to provide feedback.
What we are all, as IT Professionals, coming to grips with is that Symantec (or any other Software company) can and will develop what they choose, when they choose it, and will likely do so in a vaccuum.
Despite its perceived size as a company, Symantec is clearly operating as a small company and resting its laurels on a pre-selected 'focus' group as its beta testers. Despite the massive amount of users of the software, the focus/beta group was clearly small. Also, based on other posts in the forums where many have claimed to be part of the beta test group, and have claimed to express their disconcern with the layout, interface, functionality and 'feature' omissions/exclusions, it's clear that the feedback from the beta testers was more to report "this button doesn't work" or other 'bugs' identified, rather than actual problems with continuity of the software from its prior version or requesting functionality changes.
Symantec and their product developement teams had a plan to produce a specific product interface, and they certainly did so. Much like the SEP product which was released without much of any prior notification as to its 180° departure from SAV, only to greet the Administrator with a clunky, heavy, un-intuitive, convoluted, and unneccesarrily complex interface, is recipe for failure. Shame on Symantec for repeating their own prior mistakes. This is what happens when management dictates changes to a product without a clear understanding of the importance of the existing product and its features to its core demographic.
As with my migration from SAV to a brief stint with SEP (with the hopes that my administrators and support staff would familiarize themselves with the product; to no avail), followed by a jump to a non-Symantec product, I fear that this is the roadmap for BE within my environment as well. Saddening really, because I've been using BE in various environments since the late '90's when it was owned by Veritas.