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Changes to the Small Business Server Family

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Last thursday a bunch of geeks gathered at the Microsoft offices at East End of Princess Street for the Edinburgh Small Business Server Community meeting. I’m proud to say that I was one of those geeks!

On a semi regular basis, like minded Microsoft partners get together in Edinburgh to discuss what’s happening in our industry and to have a good old natter about all things computery. It was another interesting meeting with presentations from the Microsoft Partner and Marketing departments, and a special visist from Microsoft MVP Rob Pearman, always a pleasure Rob!

One of the main points that was discussed in the presentation was the change to the Microsoft Small Business Server line of products. From mid 2013 the only version of SBS will be SBS Essentials which will support up to a maximum of 25 users and will have email and sharepoint not on the same server but delivered by the cloud. If you have more than 25 users then you need to move the the full server suite of products and accept the higher price tag that comes with it! This went down like a lead brick in the IT community!!!

Personally, i’m quite looking forward to seeing where the industry will go in the next couple of years, my bet is that in around 5 years time (or less) there will be an option to subscribe to a Microsoft SBS in the cloud. No more in-house server. Now, who will take me up on that bet?

Over the coming months i’ll be discussing with clients the changes to the Microsoft SBS family and how it will affect them. However, if anyone wants any further information, feel free to get in touch.

All the best, Paul.