New Business Server versions released

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Microsoft has released Windows Small Business Server 2008 (SBS 2008) and Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (EBS 2008), replacing SBS after five years in service. To complete the picture, Windows Server 2008 sits at the top end for the corporate and enterprise market places, while Windows Home Server takes care of the bottom end.

SBS is aimed at small businesses with fewer than 75 employees while EBS is aimed at medium businesses (less than 300 staff) and the two products collectively are known as WESS (Windows Essential Server Solutions).

There are 95,000 small businesses in Ireland, of which 16,000 have installed SBS 2003, according to Enda Flynn, WESS product manager.

Netforce MD Larry Doyle pinpointed many reasons why his customers would upgrade to SBS 2008. He listed a significant performance gain with greater levels of efficiency, improved stability, 64bit performance and the inclusion of Exchange Server 2007, with improvements such as unlimited mailbox sizes.

The new releases place great emphasis on ease of deployment, with numerous wizard help screens to simplify and speed installation and migration from older versions. Doyle said that setup and migration were much more straightforward and “should not take more than a day” He said both could be done without visits to the devices on the network.

Support for mobility has been greatly improved and simplified. Collaboration features have been improved with the inclusion of SharePoint Services 3.0. In the Vista environment, file transfer speeds have been greatly speeded up, according to Microsoft.

SBS 2008 comes in standard and premium versions. The standard edition, costing EUR*912 with five client licences, is designed to run on one box while the premium model comes with a second Windows Server 2008 licence with Terminal Services and SQL Server 2008 standard for small business. CALs (client licences) can be purchased singularly for users or devices.

Backup has been redesigned to be disk-only, deploying two or more exchangeable hard disks that can be removed from site. Tape can still be used with third party products but Flynn and Doyle maintain that the benefits of disk backup far outweigh tape.

EBS 2008 also comes in standard and premium versions. The standard EBS 2008 supports three servers – Management, Messaging and Security – while premium EBS 2008 adds a fourth database server. Also included in both versions are System Center Essentials 2007, Forefront Security and Threat Management, in addition to all that comes with the SBS 2008 versions.

While Microsoft is no longer selling SBS 2003, some OEM stocks may be available until early next year, and Microsoft will support SBS 2003 until the end of 2009 with extended pay support to 2015. Users will have the option to downgrade to SBS 2003 but this will have to be a complete downgrade.

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