Small Business Server has become an outdated product. What small business can justify the overhead needing to run their own local copies of Exchange and Sharepoint? Use the cloud, dump the old school bloat.

Joe you forgot to mention that a major component has been taken away from SBS Premium edition, ISA server.

Instead of making life simpler for small businesses, the new edition is going to make it more complex. Now they have purchase a seperate firewall and manage that seperately!!

I would have expected Microsoft to include ISA in the standard edition itself.

SBS 2008 is not new but a retarded version!!

CALs is something Microsoft needs to work more carefully on.

Small Businesses that need local stores for paranoia issues for one. I have few clients that want all their data in the cloud at this time.

Remember that the SQL in the 2k3 era is different.

1. Can be moved to second server
2. Is Standard not workgroup

But you are right that the a/v is just the normal trial offer now.

(screwed up the comment)

SQL in the 2k8 era is different is what that should say.

"Mac OS X Server costs much less ($999 with unlimited CALs) than SBS and easily supports Windows desktops."

What's your point? They're not full equivalents.

Why cry about a price increase?
If I was trading in my 5 year old car for one with way better engineering and features, I would expect to pay a little more.
Is there truly no added value?
Thanks for the info, but stop whining!

And yes, I would expect all versions to include ISA AND Forefront! And I would pay a little more for that too! (it’s the already configured server that I like the best)

Reginald wrote: "Why cry about a price increase? If I was trading in my 5 year old car for one with way better engineering and features, I would expect to pay a little more."

You're right on paying "a little more," Reginald but wrong that this gels with Microsoft's increase. I randomly chose the Chevrolet Suburban 2500 for comparison. The MSRP, manufacturers suggest retail price, was $38,650 for the 2003 model and $39,495 for the 2008 model; I chose entry models for both. That's a 2.2 percent.

By comparison, Microsoft raised the cost of Premium CALs from $90 to $189. That's $99 more, or a 110 percent increase. Are you saying the value add is worth a 110 percent increase? Put another way, would you pay around $80,000 today for the same model car costing close to $39,000 five years ago?

Joe

Joe, if you factor in inflation I'm sure the end result is a cheaper Suburban and a still exorbitantly expensive Premium CAL.

i don't get your math in the standard business example. it may be $40 less per user, but my math shows 2008 standard costing $425 more than 2003 for 10 users.

2003 2008
base 599 1089
5 cals 450 385
total 1049 1474
425

As a Small Business Specialist, I was almost salivating over Cougar (SBS 2008). After all, it was promised to be true 64 bit, include the One Care Service, etc.

Until...
1. The removal of ISA & it's fairly simple management in SBS 2003, adding even more additional cost
2. The requirement for 2 server boxes, a cost that wasn't discussed in the article (at least $600)

and now...the MASSIVE price hike!

In addition, a matter not discussed in the article: many SBS specialist firms are also MSPs that provide remote management services as well as a long list of services that will put MS in full competition with us.

Microsoft has a small, but dedicated, cadre of small business focused consultants that have been successfully selling SBS around the globe. The grumbling about the reduced functionality has been a bit muted; many of us thought the price would either remain static or even maybe drop....I imagine there will be a great roar of anger emanating from their carefully developed army of SBS specialists.

I, for one, will be talking to my MS Rep about this - and anyone else that will listen.

Mark

Econ 101 says that a higher price will lead to a lower demand. If demand for an item is "elastic", it decreases rapidly as the price rises. If demand is "inelastic", it decreases slowly. Commonsense says that small businesses are much less likely to be gaining a significant business advantage over competition through a Microsoft "locked in" technology and much more flexible and adaptable than large concerns. Converting from, for example, SBS and Exchange to an open source or Apple solution is going to be a lot easier for a six-person SOHO than it will be for a 100,000 employee corporation. Given that we're in a slowdown, if not an outright recession, and the beating the economy is just beginning to take from high gas prices, IMHO, this seems to be a very bad move on Microsoft's part.

Joe;

First, great illustration with the lame comment from the peanut gallery, "Reginald wrote: 'Why cry about a price increase? If I was trading in my 5 year old car for one with way better engineering and features, I would expect to pay a little more.'"

My thoughts on the 110% price hike is it could be from the lackluster sales of Viasco, I mean Vista. Maybe a way to make up some financial ground for the board members or something. I am sure we will see the same sort of price hike in the new versions of Office and such in the future... Just a thought.

Hi Joe;

Thanks for the article, I appreciate knowing what's happening out in the marketplace.

However, I get confused easily, when I read sentences that seem out of context. In this article, there's a sentence: "Microsoft can get away with the price increase because the SBS install base isn't huge..."

Do you really mean to say "...isn't huge.."? I thought the installed base of SBS "IS" huge!

Another sentence that's confusing to me, says: "more time than I have for this blog." It looks like an article to me. Does everything have to be "A BLOG" these days, for people to want to read it?

Thanks in advance,
Dave

One can spend $ 0 on a Linux server license and pay $ 0 for each Client Access License.... But that would make too much sense.

It wouldn't surprise me if this increase is related to Microsoft's push into online services. It would make sense to increase the price on what SMBs use to hopefully drive some of them towards the cloud without bringing down the ire of VARs more than they have who work with SMBs to install, configure, and maintain SBS. It wouldn't surprise me if, in a few years time, we see a slow phasing out of SBS or an SBS + cloud hybrid solution.

-matt

Mark there is no "requirement" for two boxes.

Standard is one, Premium with SQL 2008 can be back on the same one box as well.

And Ralph... please build a RWW, Exchange equivalent and now value your time spent in building that product to provide the same equivalents.

If I wanted to go that route I'd go Novell, Nitix or Clark Connect.

Linux is not free.

Actually, for all the features and functionality of SBS 2003, it is way, way underpriced. Microsoft is making the adjustment now to bring this server product into the price realm that it belongs in. Now that we've drank the SBS Kool-aid, we and our customers are going to pay a realistic price.

The SBS2008 product doesn't appear to have any "whoopie" real new features or functionality, but the beta testers have told me that the integration with Vista is very impressive, and the XP integration leaves a bit to be desired. Thus, when desktops begin to move to Vista, SBS2008 will be the "de-facto standard" for those environments. Exchange 2007 has some improvements over Exchange 2003 (unlimited storage, for example) And the mobile features are improved, both for handhelds and for remote workers. (I haven't seen OWA 2007 yet, but one of the beta testers told me would use it over the Outlook 2007 client hands down)

At the Launch Event yesterday, the presenter indicated that Windows Server 2008 technology has SharePoint features built-in. It's their new wave for moving from traditional file-shares to this more collaborative technology.

And, there are compelling reasons for using the cloud to provide mail and other services. With the dependence on an Internet connection, and the latency that factors into that equation, there are still business applications that can't be hosted so far away. So if you're going to bring in a server anyway, providing a local server resource for mail and filesharing doesn't add that much more to the costs in the long run.

Well, It's about time to move over to linux, particularly Ubuntu which just released its news version which provides more functionality than what microsoft is overing, for not a dime or a peny.

Maybe Joe can post a comparison about the two Server OS in the near future. Maybe talk to the guys at ubuntu.

@ Susan :

"If I wanted to go that route I'd go Novell, Nitix or Clark Connect.

Linux is not free."
----------------------------------------------------
Actually it is, but I do take your point about server Linux, as opposed to community distro Linux, for the home users. Except even here, there are some free ones for servers, one example would be CentOS. It free, and really is Red Hat Enterprise, without the tech support, so one would have to rely on the community support from such as the CentOS forums.

But then people who have to have paid support from such as the likes of Microsoft, are generally very disappointed, to say the least. As far as Server Linux support, companies like IBM will come in for a fee and setup your servers/lan, and help maintain the linux systems. I believe IBM also does that for Windows systems in businesses as well. Talking large corporations here. Its best to do your own tech support, and know something about the systems that you run, and if your people don't, you will still be lost, even on windows. Linux still has the one major advantage compared to MS Windows, malware doesn't affect it. And that's a huge one.

@ Chips:
What do you mean that malware does not affect Linux?
Is that the same myth that there are no viruses for Macintoshes?
Microsofr OSes are the bigger target becuase there are more computers out there running their coftware, but that does not mean that the treats that apply to MS OSes do not apply to Macs and Linux computers. A quick search shows that the threats are out there.

David

Linux is free if your time is worth nothing.

Does this pricing seem like an attempt to get SA on SBS2003 sold enmasse before the launch of SBS2008?

Is it really fair to compare current End of Life Pricing of SBS 2003 to a brand new product?? Perhaps one should compare SBS 2008 pricing with the pricing of SBS 2003 when it was INTIALLY launched??

Henry

"Joel Sider, senior product manager with the Windows server solutions group explained, "You have a path to the new products," referring to Software Assutance coverage."

...Software Assurance coverage."

Given the discussions re MS updates on products, Web 2.0 (to my primitive mind a [much safer] reiteration of the mainframe/dumb terminal concept), and alternative software builds, I actually do think Microsoft is building a bad future just as IBM did mid-80's (driving people* to seek desperately for an alternative solution). *read 'businesses' if you like

The (well, one) discussion about Vista/XP is going on here-- http://discuss.pcmag.com/forums/thread/1004400496.aspx and I actually do think it's relevant.
--Glenn

Doug Says :
"Linux is free if your time is worth nothing."

@Doug :
Linux is free if your MONEY is worth SOMETHING to YOU.

Hence, air is free if you are willing to breath.

have a nice day ;)

Doug, there are so many ways to express the wrongness of our statement. I'll try to list a few:

- Linux's principles evolve very little. Once you dominate the basics things don't change. Windows on the contrary changes every time. New things are added other stuff taken out. You have to relearn (or retrain) for Windows on every release cycle. Thus the time spent on certification (and money too) become nothing.

- If you refer to the issue of drivers. Well then the statement applies perfectly to Vista too.

- If you refer to the "volatile location of files" a) you don't know Linux too much and b) you haven't worked with internationalized versions of Windows.

I have kept away from Microsoft technology as much as possible because it gives me the impression my knowledge is under a "planned obsolescence" path.

@David Houston, clearly if you have MySQL installed on Windows and Linux they would both share the same exploit vector if that particular version of MySQL had a vulnerability.

Now Windows has a few key errors in its design that make it more vulnerable than Linux and Mac. This is regardless of the market share.

1) The .exe, .com, .bat issue. A downloaded file with such extensions will be runnable. That is the OS will try to execute it if double clicked or called from the command line. I just did that with an ISO file for Kubuntu (a Linux distro). I changed the extension and I could try to execute it simply by opening it. Do take note that I downloaded that file from the internet. So it was created with execute permissions. Linux would not allow that. File extensions in Linux mean nothing. They are nice to haves if your in a graphic environment and want to see the icons, but file permissions dominate execution rights regardless of file extension.

2) Like I mentioned the ISO file I downloaded was done so with full rights of the owner. Linux uses a file permission create mask that usually limits rights to read and write for owner and no execute. So if I accidentally download a script (.sh) file with damaging instructions it would not run by simply calling the file. If I download a .bat file it could be executed. Linux also uses file headers (check out the file command) to see what type of file it is reading. So a JPG file would still be seen as an image file even if the extension is .exe

The whole concept of UAC is living proof of this design flaw. Basically a huge if then else statement around executable files.

Mcrosoft has a severe dislike for sophisticated home users. I have run SBS for about 12 years, witout a problem I amnow at SBS2003R2 which isa little difficult t maage but a great product for a hone office wit a literate user. I plan to use it until everthing I need is web based. Who is the targeted market for his product? I have no idea. Hopefully a UNIX vender will jump in with a trn key home server including bbusiness servers and h0me servers. THe proper prce for a small business/ multimedia home server working on wimax could wth network access to media and hardware based servers with mirrored network and home backup is what the world needs. I would love to lcense SBS R@ and take it to te next level of functionality. Microsoft is createng multiple opprtunities for better home/small business/ multimedia products and unix could contribute to scaleablty and user support

Donald Wiston, MD

Personal:
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Chris Dunn,

Why do people continue the madness? Get a Linux based small business solution, everything included (hardware and software) for a third of the cost! NO LICENSE FEES, RELIABILITY, AND FUNCTION. People will never break the "conditioning". Check out Office Appliance the "Helm". For about $2000.00 you get unlimited users and more functions than MS could ever provide. I have been running our business trouble free for years. If you don't try it...you deserve to get ripped!

Microsoft has shot themselves in the foot on this one. As a software developer, and MSP, we decided today to use MySQL instead of continuing down the SBS road - simply - Premium with SQL is too expensive for small businesses running one app, ours, for their business.