Microsoft SBS is Dead

SBS RIP - SBS Axed

It's true, at the time of posting Microsoft have decided to axe their portfolio of SBS (Small Business Server) products. 

The current incarnation, Small Business Server 2011, will continue to be available for most of 2013, but after that it will be no more.

SBS essentials will die,
SBS Standard will die,
and SBS Premium will die.

Microsoft have been repeating a mantra insisting that their coud suite, Office 365,will provide everything that a small or medium size company would need and more, but is not right for everyone and we want choice.

As a reseller, support company and advocate of Microsofts Cloud services, a large volume of our business is still with the SBS family of products.
So if SBS is dead, what can we do?
The on-premise alternative to SBS is to buy the separate Microsoft licenses - Windows Server and Exchange.

At the very least (when following best practise) you will need two Windows Server licenses and one Exchange license. The approximate license cost for a 15 user company would be about £2,750.00. This compares to a cost of approx' £1,400.00 for the equivalent SBS software.

So, why do customers continue to buy SBS over Office365? Simply because it works, it is affordable and it is tried and tested over many years. For the same reasons, they don't yet trust Office365.

I think that there is no doubt that Microsoft is the clear market leader in the small and medium business server market, largely thanks to SBS.  So it seems very strange to risk this dominant position to go toe to toe with Google Apps and other cloud offerings.

They key here is choice, if customers are faced with no choice, even the most ardent Microsoft fan is going to at least look at the competition to see how it compares.  Microsoft may find that some customers who would never stray from SBS will suddlenly shop around for the best cloud offering and they won't all buy into the Microsoft dream.