SBS: Hear It Roar

According to documents viewed by CRN, the Redmond, Wash., software giant intends to provide in the Cougar release stronger desktop integration with the Windows Vista client and Office 12, support for extranet scenarios, and support for line-of-business applications from Microsoft Business Solutions and other application vendors.

Due in 2007 after the Vista client and Longhorn server ship, the Cougar release also will make strides toward reducing the technical skill set needed to deploy, configure, manage and troubleshoot SBS environments, the documents revealed.

Microsoft has summoned its Small Business Advisory Council to its corporate headquarters on Sept. 12 to get feedback on plans for Cougar and to discuss the 2006 release of the R2 edition of Windows Small Business Server, sources told CRN.

One solution provider said he expects SBS 2000 customers to move to R2 but he predicted that existing SBS 2003 customers will use the SP1 update and hold off on the R2 upgrade while they wait for Cougar.

“SBS 2000 really nailed stability, while SBS 2003 really nailed functionality. Cougar can really take another large leap forward in feature set,” said Michael Cocanower, president of ITSynergy, Phoenix. “I am especially excited about the functionality around extranet scenarios in that release, and feel that feature could be the single feature that sells upgrades, similar to what Remote Web Workplace did for SBS 2003.”

Windows SBS 2003 SP1, which shipped in May, includes Exchange SP1, Outlook SP1, SharePoint SP1, Windows XP SP2, and for Premium Edition owners, SQL Server 2000 SP4 and ISA 2004 firewall.

Next year, Microsoft plans a more substantial upgrade of SBS based on the R2 version of Windows Server 2003 that will offer improved patch and update management by including Windows Server Update Services, SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition, and expanded mailbox limits up to 75 Gbytes. In addition, R2 will offer Exchange SP2 and SharePoint SP2. Microsoft also had planned to have automatic configuration of RPC over HTTP in R2, but the company said that feature won't be included in that release.

Another partner that doesn&t deploy SBS to his larger clients but whose firm previously used SBS in-house, said the new features in R2 will likely please many shops.

“We moved off SBS because of its mailbox limits and we needed broader SQL capability, so based on that and [new features] planned for R2 I can see this as a good thing as it lets [the server] move up a bit in the marketplace,” said Bob Tedesco, CTO of Resolute, a Microsoft partner in Bellevue, Wash. “But the biggest thing is security and patch management. Many small target customers do not have IT groups to rely on and need this to be bulletproof and simple to manage.”

One solution provider that dislikes SBS said he will push instead the midmarket server bundle promotion for his SMB customers. “The new midmarket bundle is much better—discounted software and then let the actual customer needs dictate the number of servers needed,” said Mike Healey, president of TENCorp, Needham, Mass.