astro posted on March 13, 2010 08:50
It’s been a week since Microsoft announced its end of life for EBS and the community has reacted strongly. I met with Microsoft Redmond this past Wednesday and did not receive an official update on the EBS situation.
The online community new groups are on fire about Microsoft’s decision to end-of-life Windows Essential Business Server (EBS). Microsoft’s announcement caught the SMB community by surprise last Friday (see my “breaking news” e-mail last Friday afternoon on this topic).
I will use this article to update last week’s announcement.
Resources– this EBS conversation is dynamic. There are two community newsgroups that I suggest you join and monitor for this EBS story and other relevant content:
• SBS2K: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/sbs2k/messages?o=1&yguid=334487748
• SmallBizIT: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smallbizIT/
Definition: Let’s remember exactly what EBS is. Over the weekend I received numerous e-mails from folks who never really had the chance to meet EBS properly. Fair enough – exactly what are we talking about?
EBS was positioned as an infrastructure suite for the mid-market. EBS came in two versions: standard and premium. It consists of up to four separate servers: Management, Messaging, Security, plus the Database server (in the premium edition). The infrastructure suite used all of the well-known Microsoft back office components, including Windows Server 2008, Exchange, System Center Essentials, SharePoint, Forefront, and SQL Server. A quick study can be found here:
Partner impact?
Prominent partner independent small business technology consultant Jason Harrison (Harrison Technology Consulting) feels strongly that EBS was a misfit right from the start. He shared the following with me.
“Why all the fuss about EBS? It was a doomed solution from the beginning. I avoided it from the start because it just did not have enough market potential. It did definitely fit in some niche areas, but due to its mix of technologies it was just not going to see broad enough traction. happen. ISA integration killed EBS from the beginning. No one likes ISA. I’m even an old hat at ISA and don’t like it. It ISA has always been was too complicated to setup and manage for the small or mid-market business space. Microsoft needs to look at building technology solutions for the SMB space instead of scaling down enterprise technologies. A lot of SBS can be overkill in many scenarios. Exchange is pretty much overkill period. It’s a big bulky solution for handling the simple task of mail and light collaboration for small business.
I predicted EBS would fail before it was launched and we stayed away from it completely. I also think cloud has its place, but I simply do not see cloud fully replacing mission critical processes in the long run. There is way too much hype around it, so you know it’s not going to be what the hype says it will be. Rarely does any technology live up to the hype.
I don’t belive Microsoft’s statement about the cloud killing EBS. is, well, BS! It’s just their marketing spin on a failed product. Shoot one down and build another up. Think about it, if EBS fell to cloud options, don’t you think SBS would be in the same boat? In reality, if cloud was doing so well, SBS would be more likely to go before EBS. Mid-market companies are less likely to go cloud than most smaller businesses for many reasons.
EBS was good in concept, but that was it.” I am certain Microsoft was not selling enough EBS licenses for it to remain a sustainable business for them long term. Microsoft is like any other business, they will keep selling what makes money and drop what doesn’t. Unfortunately in our world that can be painful for those that developed solutions and businesses around the dropped products. I speak from experience.”
Long-time SBSer Charles Carkeek shared this story that brings home the fact that real partners were impacted by this decision last Friday:
How sad to hear that EBS is finished. I have a not-for-profit client running 100 seats of Terminal Services Desktops, on EBS, on a Hyper-V platform (four virtual servers) hosted at Grant Thompson’s MB Technology Group. I have also put this same customer on 100 seats of BPOS, migrated them to it, and they love it. I moved them from SBS because they got too big. Well, time to regroup.
I’m going to go read the links in your newsletter.
I’m looking forward to SMB Nation in Las Vegas!
Thank you,
Charles
EBS alternatives?
Charles surfaces a valid point about regrouping. What alternatives exist for us post-EBS? Later last Friday, after terminating EBS, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave a speech that Microsoft is "all in" for "Cloud Computing." The vision statement, recited at the University of Washington, suggests that Microsoft Online Services – led by the Business Productivity Online Suite, is clearly Microsoft’s new mantra.
In fact – Charles is profiled in a Microsoft case study migrating a partner FROM the EBS platform to BPOS: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000006504 (this is a very telling case study as it was released just a month ago). Another feet on the street hint about replacing EBS is this upcoming Microsoft BPOS webinar on using CRM, a line-of-business application, online tomorrow (Thursday, March 11) http://blogs.technet.com/msonline/archive/2010/03/08/webinar-using-bpos-and-microsoft-crm-together-to-deliver-great-customer-solutions.aspx?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Another alternative is IBM’s Lotus Foundations product, especially the Lotus Foundations Branch Office product. Learn more about this robust open source product here:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/foundations/
Conclusion: I believed EBS was a thoughtful product for the mid-market and the return of the 1990s’ circa BackOffice product. It had a fantastic GEEK dimension to it as it required lots of relevant planning before deployment. The scenario wizards were amazing. Please share your thoughts with me as I’m not done covering this story yet!