It was a little less than 2 years ago when I did my first Windows Small Business Server 2008 migration. Time rolls on, and I shouldn't be surprised that we have now heard the first rumblings of the next new thing, complete with a code name, SBS 7.
This will be the successor to the current "less than 75 seats" small business server. The 50-300 seat Essential Business Server has already been scrapped.
They also announced a new product SBS Aurora, similar in concept to small business server, but designed to be smaller and simpler with "cloud services" integration built in for additional services. Presumably these will be services such as Hosted Exchange.
I think there is a lot to be said for that approach in certain small businesses. Exchange can be quite resource intensive, and beside adding and deleting user mailboxes, is generally not really something that ordinary users in a small business can manage themselves.
Neither of these are available yet, not even in beta. Microsoft said nothing of the sort, but if I do the counting on my fingers, I think this announcement means we can look for the products to hit the street in late 2012.
WOW!
No offence, But I'd have to dissagree with the statement of "adding and deleting user mailboxes, is generally not really something that ordinary users in a small business can manage themselves."
As far as SBS IMO that statement is false.
SBS is designed for an ordinary users with some knowledge to handle basic tasks.
SBS uses Wizards to help create user accounts, exchange accounts set users permissions an help configure PC's that are added to the domain.
The key of course to a Successfull SBS server is the Deployment and configuration, (There are still IT people who do not understand how to configure SBS)
If the person who installs SBS bothers to RTFM the client will love SBS.
And you really shouldn't post Dates when there is nothing officialy said.
There is enough False informaton about SBS as it is, we don't need any more....
For Details on how SBS works and helps small businesses Please see http://www.microsoft.com/sbs
I agree with your assesment of SBS being accessible to users with limited server and network management knowledge.
I meant to explain that this can be done by users; other things not so much. The only other feature of Exchange mailboxes that I can think of, off the top of my head, which can be managed from the SBS console is changing mailbox quotas.
(I know that SBS 2008 does also have the very useful ability to move the whole Exchange store to another disk with the click of a link on the SBS console.)
I think giving the smallest of small business networks (1 to 5 employees who may not all work in the same place) the option to integrate and manage some external services such as Hosted Exchange can be a huge benefit in many cases, and result in even more SBS users. As I read the blog post, this is what the new SBS Aurora promises to do.
SBS 7 will still have Exchange, and be a good solution for thos who use SBS 2008 now.
As I stated, Microsoft said nothing of the sort when it came to dates. That was entirely my own wild predection. I may be proven wrong, we shall see.