Microsoft to kill off Essential Business Server

By David Neal on Mar 9, 2010 7:16 AM
Filed under Software

Development will end on 30 June.

Microsoft has announced plans to streamline its mid-market server product line, including an end to development for Windows Essential Business Server (EBS).

The company cited emerging technologies such as cloud computing and virtualisation as influencing its decision.

"Four years ago, we committed to building an infrastructure solution for the mid-market. Windows EBS was the first of its kind to meet the unique needs of mid-market IT pros, but since that time the market landscape has naturally changed," said Microsoft.

"Today, we announced the decision to streamline our server product portfolio and will discontinue future development of EBS effective 30 June 2010."

Microsoft said that it is aware that the decision could cause problems for some users, but claimed that it will help companies to adapt by offering a limited free offer on its component software.

"We recognise that ending future editions of EBS could result in additional cost and complexity for our EBS customers. Therefore we are going to provide a limited offer for all EBS 2008 customers," the firm said.

"Beginning on 30 June 2010 through 31 December 2010, current EBS 2008 customers can get the individual component software from the EBS 2008 suite for free."

Organisations wanting to migrate to an alternative within Microsoft's server and cloud range can do so for the next six months at promotional prices.

"This decision not to ship future versions of EBS does not come lightly, and will not impact any other Windows Server products and solutions, including the next version of Windows Small Business Server [SBS]," said Microsoft.

"As a matter of fact, we are working hard to build the next version of SBS and look forward to a second decade of success with this award-winning small business offering."

Microsoft to kill off Essential Business Server

1 comment in this discussion

"I only have knowledge of the Microsoft Small Business Server and its dropped support for prior API sets etc causing huge compatibility issues... But with a name like EBS08, I guess most installs ..."

By Graeme Harrison (prof at-symbol post.harvard.edu)

Tags

ebs, server, essential, sbs, business, windows, customers, decision, microsoft

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Comments: 1

Graeme Harrison (prof at-symbol post.harvard.edu)

Mar 9, 2010 9:34 AM

I only have knowledge of the Microsoft Small Business Server and its dropped support for prior API sets etc causing huge compatibility issues...

But with a name like EBS08, I guess most installs happened in 2009, so it must come as bit of surprise to its users to find that support for the product essentially dies in mid-2010.

I know there are issues in migrating legacy systems to open source, but another 'product dumped' notice sure gives even more incentive to go to Linux-based servers, in terms of never hitting any licensing limitations, user connection limitations, componentry-shipped limitations, or support-into-the-future limitations. In short, with open source, you get the whole product, for as many users as you can connect, for an indefinitely long licence period, with only gradual small improvements, rather than the seismic 'packaging-related' product changes. Indeed "terminations" are virtually unheard of, simply because there is no incentive to come out with similar bundles of components in a different price-point package for a different market segment (such being the difference between SBS & EBS). Proprietary offerings are always thinking in terms of price/packaging for a particular market to maximise overall marging. But with free software, there is no need - you simply put ALL of the functionality into the one package, and people use what they want of it.

Similarly, after six years using Open Office (www.openoffice.org) on a daily basis, I have to say there is nothing I miss from the proprietary office suites. You get true document standards, one-click PDF, etc and can read your files "forever" off virtually any OS. And the newer Sun PDF+ODT combined format, means you can save all of your word processing documents to a PDF format which happens to also embed your Open Document Text ISO-format, so the document can be viewed and shipped just like a PDF, but if you want to edit it, you get full editing of every element (without any loss of detail in format conversions) by virtue of the ODT being in the file as well.