Yoav has invited me to be a guest blogger today to help celebrate an important occasion.  Beginning today, May 31st, Windows Live OneCare is available in over a dozen of the top retail stores nationwide in the U.S. and as a direct download from Microsoft at http://onecare.live.com.  The OneCare team has worked extremely hard to build this great service and I’d like to extend my heartfelt congratulations on a job well done! 

 

Being new to the OneCare team blog, I’d like to take a quick moment to introduce myself.  I’m Ryan Hamlin, general manager of the Technology Care and Safety Group at Microsoft, a team dedicated to helping further Microsoft’s companywide vision and innovation to address online safety and consumer PC care issues.  As part of this role, I oversee the Windows Live OneCare team, which has built the all-in-one PC care service you have all come to love. 

 

We’re constantly investigating the needs and demands of our customers and it is this process which first spurred the idea of Windows Live OneCare.  Our Windows customers told us that they didn’t have the time, or in some cases the expertise, to keep up with the protection and maintenance tasks required to keep their PCs running well.  For example, our research showed that only 1 in 10 consumers were effectively backing up their valuable personal data, including music and photos. These customers wanted a new approach to PC care - a “just take care of it for me” experience. That’s why we developed Windows Live OneCare. Over half a million users participated in the OneCare beta and we were able to add some great features based on their valuable feedback, including back-up to USB hard drive. As a result, a much higher percentage of Windows Live OneCare customers now back up on a regular basis, thus minimizing their risk of losing value data such as photos or music.

 

We’ve decided to celebrate the launch of Windows Live OneCare in a thrilling new way, appropriate for a service that has established PC Care as an entirely new category in the industry.  We’ve partnered with one of our premier retail partners - Best Buy - to wrap the Best Buy sponsored No. 66 NASCAR stockcar in OneCare logos.  Jeff Green, the #66 driver will pilot the Windows Live OneCare car in the Neighborhood Excellence 400 event this Saturday, June 4, at Dover International Speedway in Dover, Del.

 

So you’re bound to ask - what does Windows Live OneCare have to do with stock car racing and NASCAR?  I’m glad you asked.  Jeff Green is an excellent driver, with years of racing experience, but he couldn’t be successful without the behind the scenes work of a talented pit-crew.  His pit crew ensures that his vehicle is safe and running at maximum performance, so Jeff can focus on what’s important: driving.  Windows Live OneCare is remarkably similar.  It handles the day-to-day, behind the scenes maintenance to keep your PC safe and running smoothly, so you can focus on what’s important to you: enjoying your online experience and digital lifestyle.  Windows Live OneCare is like a pit-crew for your PC. 

 

We recognize that consumers have a choice when it comes to taking care of their PCs.  In fact, others in the industry have recognized the need for PC care services and have announced that they are developing similar offerings.  We see our comprehensive PC care approach as a new and important direction for consumer PC services and are not surprised that others are working to develop similar offerings.  We’re confident our innovative “pit-crew” style service will meet the demands of our customers; and as our customers’ demands evolve, Windows Live OneCare will evolve.  We will continue to provide the “take care of it for me experience” that you have come to expect. 

 

So now that you have a little background on OneCare’s history and future, please go to http://onecare.live.com or one of many retailers around the country and give Windows Live OneCare a try.  We’re confident you will be very happy with the final service.  

 

Thanks,

Ryan

Windows Live OneCare – ICSA Labs and WCL Labs certified

My name is Girish Bablani and I am the engineering manager for Windows Live OneCare. Yoav thought it would be interesting for some of the managers on the OneCare effort to share their thoughts on the product and so here I am.

 

I have been a reader of this space and now am really excited to be blogging on it as well. I think this forum is invaluable for exchanging views between the people working on the product and you who are really helping us make the product better.

 

Today I will talk about 2 things – Windows Live OneCare earning industry certifications and share a personal experience with OneCare Advisories.

 

Windows Live OneCare becomes a certified service

First, we have some great news to share.  The final version of Windows Live OneCare – coming soon to a retail store near you – has been certified by ICSA Labs as an effective solution to combat viruses and other forms of malicious code as well as providing a quality firewall service. In addition, OneCare has achieved West Coast Lab’s Checkmark certification, meeting the lab’s criteria for protection against malware.  These certifications are evidence of our commitment to deliver a comprehensive, quality PC Care product and another key milestone in the product development process.

 

For those of you unfamiliar with the certification process – in short, it is an official recognition from an independent 3^rd party organization that OneCare is effective in helping protect your PC from malware.  This means that our customers can be more confident than ever that OneCare is effectively helping protect their PCs.  We’ve worked hard to achieve this important certification and we’re thrilled that we get to share this news with all of you.  This is a major milestone and we thank you – our customers – for helping us get there. We also want to thank our partner teams for helping us get there - see Matt Braverman's blog for more on this topic:  http://blogs.technet.com/antimalware/archive/2006/05/25/430279.aspx

 

Windows Live OneCare Advisory – A Story

Second, I wanted to share a story with you which was very motivating for me and keeps on reminding me how much we can simplify a customer’s life by having a service backing up our software. If you remember in late November there was an attack with a new variant of the Sober worm which was characterized as the biggest virus outbreak ever by some media. The story on the attack and the virus was all over the media, and of course people who read or heard the news were nervous about whether they were protected or not. One such person happened to be my neighbor. He was someone who I had persuaded to install OneCare. Anyway to cut a long story short, when our operations team realized that the Sober news was blanketing the world they sent out an advisory that stated that if a OneCare machine was “green” it was safe from Sober. For folks who haven’t seen one (we don’t send these out lightly, so if you have not seen one that is okay) an advisory is an alert mechanism which can be used by our operations team to send a real time message to all our subscribers. The message shows up on the users OneCare console in real time. When my neighbor ended up checking his machine he was really happy to see the advisory and knew that he did not have to worry about the virus. When we talked the next day he thanked me for sending out the advisory. Similarly while I was at work people who knew I worked on the OneCare team stopped me in the hallway and thanked me for the advisory that we sent. Of course in keeping with our philosophy of being silent and operating in the background we have a high bar for sending out advisories, but the point of the story is that its really motivating when you realize that all the hard work put into building a product and service made someone’s life just a little bit easier.

 

Free Trial

We’re continuing to get closer to retail availability, but for the time being, customers can download a free 90 day trial of Windows Live OneCare.  The trial version has all the bells and whistles of the full subscription, but is only licensed for one PC and is limited to email support; whereas, the full subscription is licensed for three PCs and includes access to email, phone and chat support. 

 

Not sure how to sign up for the 90 day trial?  It’s easy.  Just go to http://onecare.live.com and follow the instructions. 

 

Regards

--Girish

Hello again - this week we've got a guest column from one of my colleagues in India. Hope you appreciate his perspective. Also, keep on the lookout for additional guest columns in the coming weeks. We have some interesting people lined up to provide their thoughts on OneCare. More on that next week.

 

 

Yoav

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My name is Sandeep. I am based in India, and focus primarily on data protection for Windows Live OneCare. I am a big fan of this space because we talk directly to you, and we are constantly listening and working hard on your feedback, suggestions, rants and comments to create a world class product - Windows Live OneCare.

 

Pre-OneCare, the backup solutions available on the market were not commonly used, and did not provide a sense of ease or intuitive design. In fact, many consumers were somewhat fearful of the whole backup “space;” and then there was OneCare, which simplified it all.

 

Data protection has run an interesting journey within OneCare and Yoav thought it would be a good idea for me to recap the story so that we might help consumers understand how backup fits with the rest of OneCare to offer a complete PC care service. I will briefly summarize how we’ve worked on creating the experience around backup and restore for your PC and how we’re working further on completing the picture of total PC care protection and maintenance.

 

When we had just begun the journey, during our extensive studies, we realized that PC users are fully aware of the problems of data loss due to hard disk failure or complete loss or break down of their PC, however very few people had actually managed to figure out an effective backup solution. We discovered conventional and unconventional ways in which consumers did backup - copying/dragging/dropping files across hard disk and media, a small fraction using some other backup application, and a fairly small percentage using some kind of online backup service (rarely following any kind of disciplined schedule).

 

We also realized that our customers did not really differentiate between archiving, copying or have a well-developed sense of “data life cycle management.” This observation compelled us to offer a simple backup solution, which both eliminates complexity and ensures protection at the same time.

 

However, we all know that the recipe to good health is discipline in our practice. This same dictum applies to PC care, and those of us on the OneCare team want to emphasize these principles and help you make informed and guided decision around protecting the data on your PC by enforcing a discipline through the OneCare experience.

 

OneCare currently is capable of guiding consumers via simple, easy to follow steps, to help them identify the important data that needs to be backed up. The stored data can either be burned to CD/DVD or saved on hard disk. Then, the OneCare application reminds consumers to run backup as a part of tune-up or does it automatically, if possible.

 

Our current focus is to increase backup adoption amongst our subscriber base, and to make sure that their data is protected - so that information can be recovered at any point in time. Microsoft is committed to the cause of creating a safe, secure and protected environment for our customers; and backup is one of the core pillars supporting this vision.

 

The time for the Backup as a “set-it and forget-it” service is here, and we’re working on automating backup even further. As OneCare enforces PC care discipline by getting more predictability in the backup behavior, we expect our customers to capitalize on the benefit of data protection by making sure that they regularly follow the action item for backup.  Getting OneCare’s status to green is very important; don’t let inertia stop you from attaching a backup device and following the first full backup (and subsequent incremental backups) to remain green.

 

It really excites and thrills our team when we hear success stories from our customers (one such story is here http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=19). These testimonials really help us remember that while backup functionality represents a significant investment of our time and resources, it is equivalent in importance to life insurance for a PC.  One often doesn’t realize the benefit of this investment until a disaster strikes, which may come as a result of hard disk failure, PC theft, natural calamity, or the likes.

 

We’ve heard you ask for support for more devices, advanced control for data choice, and complaints about the performance.  We’re genuinely listening to you and incorporating many of these suggestions into our planned feature set for upcoming releases. We’re eager to make OneCare the best possible backup and overall PC care service. Please keep your suggestions flowing in.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Sandeep

Apologies for the delayed post, I was on vacation for a few weeks.

 

There have been a high number of posts over the past few weeks regarding the international availability of Windows Live OneCare.  Please know that we appreciate your concerns and apologize for any confusion you may have experienced during the beta sign-up process.  Although we communicated during the beta sign-up process that the Windows Live OneCare beta was intended for U.S. download only, we do understand that some of you in markets outside the U.S, using Windows XP SP2 (US –English) were able to download OneCare and are now concerned that you will be unable to convert to the full subscription.

 

For anyone currently using the beta, please know that you will continue to receive updated virus definitions for several months, but you will eventually have to convert to the full paid subscription (for US customers currently, and customers in certain international markets within the next 12 months). When your beta expires, you will still have the capability to restore files, do manual AV scans and manage the firewall.  However, your managed service will cease, meaning you won’t get updated protection signatures or OneCare feature enhancements.  When your beta subscription is about to expire, OneCare will alert you (approximately 30 days before signature updates stop), so you can either upgrade to a paid subscription - where available - or take other appropriate actions to maintain ongoing protection for your PC.

 

Many of you have expressed confusion and frustration over the delay in delivering OneCare internationally, let me try to explain in more detail why we are releasing to the US only at this time.  To begin, it is important to understand that there are different laws, standards, and obligations that we must fulfill as a prerequisite for accepting payment in a given country. We take those obligations seriously, and are committed to meeting both the letter and the spirit of all local laws and requirements.

 

In addition, as I have said in the past, we are not yet set up to provide support for OneCare – technical or billing – in other countries. While certain individuals might be willing to waive the right to free support, it would fundamentally alter our terms of service, and frankly, our promise to users.

 

Finally, we have not yet completed the globalization and localization process, including altering product code to support other languages and international systems. We know there will be many people thoroughly exercising every aspect of our product and we are committed to providing an experience that delights our customers.

 

So, while we hear your frustrations loud and clear and wish we could offer OneCare in other markets immediately, it will still be some time until the product is available outside of the US.

 

In other news… as of May 1st the Windows Live OneCare beta is no longer available for download; however, new customers can try OneCare for free by downloading a 90-day trial version (again, available to U.S. residents only at this time) from http://onecare.live.com.

 

We are constantly striving to improve our service and sincerely appreciate all your feedback. 

 

Many thanks,

 

Yoav