WinWeb

Can Your Small Business Wait 17 Years For A Software Update?

February 8, 2010

WinWeb didn’t fail to notice that this week saw the slightly surprising announcement from Microsoft that they would be patching a 17-year old bug. The vulnerability, present in all versions of Windows since NT 3.1, was only recently discovered and Microsoft have worked quickly to fix it. However, this does highlight an important issue regarding software updates that we at WinWeb take very seriously.

The traditional method that software vendors have always used when it comes to addressing problems often results in customers waiting a long time for a resolution. This is usually a necessary delay because the fix has to be tested many times over on different types of hardware and operating systems.

Big companies like Microsoft and Apple are now quite fast when it comes to patching urgent issues, but smaller software vendors often leave their customers waiting for months or years between patches. During this time the customer could be left with software that doesn’t work properly or leaves their computer vulnerable to an attack.

The software company also has to deal with the difficult issue of distributing their update to customers. Some software automatically checks for patches when connected to the Internet, but users have the option of ignoring this or declining to update.

Software-as-a-Service providers (like us here at WinWeb) are able to react very quickly to any problems that may arise. Although we release a totally new version approximately every 18 months, we are constantly updating on a weekly or daily basis without any disruption to our customers. There are no patches to download and being browser-based dramatically reduces the amount of compatibility issues that traditional vendors face.

Try OnlineOffice for yourself and see if you miss having to patch!