Microsoft Live Sync or Live Mesh? What's the Difference?

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Irwin Lazar, Vice President & Service Director, Nemertes Research

December 5, 2008

1 Min Read
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Microsoft's announcement that it is migrating FolderShare to Windows Live Sync in December has touched off a great deal of confusion over Microsoft's application strategy for cross-system and cross-platform synchronization. FolderShare has been in beta since Microsoft acquired it in 2005. It is designed to allow individuals to maintain shared folders across systems, or share folders on their computers with others, both Mac and Windows clients are supported. The migration to Live Sync provides feature and branding improvements, but maintains the same basic functionality. Live Mesh on the other hand is similar to Apple's "MobileMe" to enable synchronization of things like bookmarks, mail, and contacts across multiple devices. At some point I'd expect them to harmonize features and brandings, but for now think of "Sync" as a file synchronization service.

About the Author

Irwin Lazar

Vice President & Service Director, Nemertes Research

Irwin Lazar is the Vice President and Service Director at Nemertes Research, where he manages research operations, develops and manages research projects, conducts and analyzes primary research, and advises numerous enterprise and vendor clients. Irwin is responsible for benchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in areas including VOIP, UC, video conferencing, social computing, collaboration, contact center and customer engagement.

A Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and sought-after speaker and author, Irwin is a blogger for No Jitter and frequent author for SearchUnifiedCommunications.com. He is a frequent resource for the business and trade press and is regular speaker at events such as Enterprise Connect and Interop. Irwin's earlier background was in IP network architecture, design and engineering.

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