Sad Demise – The Cloud Killed Windows Essential Business Server (EBS)
Here is some breaking news. Microsoft just announced the “discontinuation” of Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) and simultaneously reaffirmed its commitment to the small and medium business (SMB) space with its Windows Small Business Server (SBS) product. So what is the reason for the sad demise of EBS?
“The cloud killed EBS” shared Jay Weiss, CEO of Computer HMO. “Chalk up a victory for robust infrastructure solutions such as Microsoft Business Productivity Online suite (BPOS). Compound that with line of business solutions such as Salesforce.com and you have a whole new, online landscape that makes the on-premises EBS solution feel so yesterday. It happened much faster than we all thought!”
I can share this background on the EBS product from the SMB Nation point of view. I go back to the days of big BackOffice, one of the best server-side SKUs ever deployed by Microsoft. In so many ways, BackOffice was the predecessor to EBS. Read on.

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It’s READY, SET, GROW time! Technology is leading the way out of the recession into a robust recovery and we want you to be THERE at the start. Please join us for the SMB Nation Spring event, April 30-May 2, 2010 in East Brunswick NJ (which we affectionately refer to as the NYC-area). This year your admission package includes two nights of hotel room lodging to help you enjoy the full-on professional conference experience!

Our vaunted GeekSpeak and BusinessSpeak tracks return with fantastic new, relevant content and a twist or two including social media and VoIP stuff! The content select has been driven by subject matter experts including MVPs (Andy Goodman, Dana Epp),  David S. Schafran, Robert Cioffi. There are a few ways to learn more about these content chairs and the powerful impact they are making on our SMB Nation Spring 2010 event. Robert recently published a fantastic article on being a certified technical advisor HERE. David published a great MSP article in our own SMB PC magazine (Issue 4-1) HERE.

To learn more about Dana and Andy – simply search on their names and you’ll see their security (Dana) and community (“HandyAndy”) expertise.

We feel strongly that the SMB Nation Spring conference is your professional get-away of choice that will send your motivated, jacked and stoked into a profitable spring, summer and beyond. Learn more about the SMB Nation Spring show HERE.
See you April 30 – May 1!
 

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SMB Nation and SpamSoap are bringing to popular BeerFests to Boston, New York City and Washington DC between March 23-25, 2010! Please join us but und...

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Oh the irony! Here is a chance to meet a virtual cloud solution team "in-person" at an event next week in Seattle. Please join me for fun, merriment a...

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Karl Palachuk conducted his popular SMB community podcast interview from the SMB VoIP workshop last week in Las Vegas. It went very well and you shoul...

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Did you know that the best hidden scret in small business server land is the Lotus Fondations Reach solution. Think of it as a small business server w...

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Please participate in our three surveys as part of the SMB nation March Madness party! Salary, Top 150 and Operations. All here and all good.

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Axcient Inc., the provider of the Axcient complete data protection and business continuity platform, purpose-built for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and IT administrators to serve their small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers, today announced the release of ServerAlive™.  With ServerAlive, Axcient is the first company to unify backup, business continuity and disaster recovery on a single platform built by the same team.

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The other day we hosted a Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) webinar called “Beyond VoIP – More SMB Stack Stuff” Afterwards, Wolfgang asked excellent question(s) and I quote: “Jennifer, I believe the event was great. The audio quality of one speaker though was a bit awkward at times. Anyway, what I would like to ask Harry or one of the guest speakers is how does Microsoft position BPOS vs. SBS? To me there seems to be a conflict for SMB partners and channels where one solution is on-premise based (SBS) and the other one is offered as SaaS (BPOS), but both compete for very much the same overlapping functionality and customers. Would be interesting to get their thoughts on that. Great stuff, keep up the good work for the SMB community! With best regards, Wolfgang S.”

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At some level, it's akin to who Microsoft prepared for several years for the departure of Bill Gates. Today I have started a long journey in career transition to politely leave the private sector and return to the academic community. I am honored and humbled to accept the appointment as Dean of the School of Technology at Aspen University.

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