astro posted on March 05, 2010 09:46
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.
There was no better product placement and goodness of fit than the BackOffice server solution in the mid-1990s. So strong was the brand that we called the emerging Small Business Server (SBS) product “Baby BackOffice” out of respect for its big brother. At that time, I was deeply involved in migrating my paying clients who used Great Plains accounting off of Novell NetWare 3.x and 4.x and its Btrieve database engine to the Microsoft Windows Server world and it’s amazing SQL Server product. Purchasing BackOffice (I believe it was the BackOffice 4.0 and 4.5 versions) with its innovative “cheaper by the dozen” bundled pricing was an extremely efficient way to acquire Windows Server, SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange e-mail. In the BackOffice 2000 time frame, the SBS and BackOffice teams were one and the same and the two products looked and acted very much alike. Program managers like Eduardo Melo brought forth the popular SBS server status reporting capabilities to BackOffice. The future was so bright we had to wear shades.
And then in Nov ember 2001, it happened much like today. Out of the blue Microsoft announced it was discontinuing the BackOffice product and would not have a 2003 time frame upgrade to BackOffice. It was end-of-lifed for economic reasons. Microsoft discovered it could make more and more money by decoupling the BackOffice bundle. Harkin back to when early releases of Microsoft Excel where over $300 USD and later you could darn near purchase the entire Microsoft Office suite for the same price. I have to believe that this econometric modeling weighed on Microsoft’s decision today to discontinue EBS.
How did SMB Nation play with EBS? We were engaged by Microsoft Redmond to create a sales course for both SBS and EBS about 20+ months ago before the commercial release of the 2008 products. By writing this courseware, I was deeply engaged in the product messaging. I pinned my hopes and desires to the success of both SBS and EBS. We even discussed publishing an EBS book with our vaunted Springer Spaniels Limited methodology. Fortunately for today, we did not underwrite such a book and absorb the associated costs for a product that has been end-of-lifed. (We already have done that with our Microsoft Response Point book). We also introduced several worldwide SMB Nation tribal members to the EBS TAP Team (not dancers but a beta testing program group) to help shape the product (“I’m SMB Nation and I create both Windows 7 and EBS!”).
So I’ve reported the news to you about the sad demise of EBS and I will now go mourn just like I did the day Big BackOffice was removed from market.
Here are some links for you to learn more about this breaking news:
EBS team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/essentialbusinessserver/default.aspx (note the nod to cloud computing)
Amy Babinchak, a speaker at SMB Nation Spring 2010 (April 30-May 2, 2010): http://www.thirdtier.net/blog/ (she here thoughts on the near completed Version 2.0 release – and parallels to Microsoft Response Point - excellent!)
SBS MVP Wayne Small: http://www.sbsfaq.com/?p=1544 (Follow his anger management therapy steps and his insightful context).
Mitch Garvis - http://garvis.ca/blogs/mitch/archive/2010/03/05/the-sad-end-to-a-suite-of-unattained-potential.aspx (His behind-the-scenes look at EBS)