As referenced last week, the long awaited public beta program for Windows Essential Business Server 2008 is now open. Woo-hoo! This is a key milestone in the launch timeline & following yesterday's pricing announcement...

Who are the Australian SBS MVPs? Don't even know what an MVP is? Well here's your chance to find out. The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award is given to select individuals around the globe in recognition of their voluntary involvement & leadership...

          TechEd 2008 early-bird registration has opened. As per my earlier post I'm happy to announce that we've secured a full SMB Pre-day! This will be filled to the brim with deep technical content around Small Business Server...

Microsoft today released the US pricing for Small Business Server 2008 & Essential Business Server 2008 . Full details on the press release here . In summary, the pricing of the new products is as follows: Windows Small Business Server 2008 Standard...

Get in quick as spots are limited - the first official public showing of Small Business Server 2008 & Essential Business Server 2008 in Australia. With the public beta of EBS 2008 now available & SBS 2008 coming on May 29th (Aussie time), now...

Second in our series of Aussie SBS MVP profiles comes Mick Malloy - aka Super Gumby (don't ask me). Open, passionate & refreshingly honest, Mick is a prolific contributor to the worldwide SBS forums such as http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sbs2k &...

Hot on the heals of the EBS 2008 beta , the Small Business Server 2008 public beta is now available for you to download. Using RC0 code, this is your first chance to have a play with the software you've been reading about for the last couple of months...

                        We received some great feedback from last week's " tell us how to you want to get up to speed on SBS 2008 & win a free book " extravaganza (books being labelled...

The excellent SMB Summit has been & gone & for those of you who couldn't make it over to Dallas for a few days, the Microsoft SBS team are kindly sharing their presentations with the world. The SkyDrive links to these are below & there...

We're holding a series of Small Business Specialist (SBSC) roundtables in Melbourne, Brisbane & Sydney & would love (and need) your feedback on the good, bad & the ugly. Feedback on the program itself, feedback on Open licensing vs OEM, feedback...

We're starting to see some Corporate driven case-studies flow down now from those customers & partners who were part of the original Technology Adoption Program (TAP). Whilst I personally think these are a bit light on specific, measurable business...

The wave is building Kinda feels like this surfer at the moment. We're on the crest. It's building up. The wave is looming massive & then.... the rush. Along with the TechEd SMB pre-day going live there are some major announcements coming out soon...

Who'd like a free Small Business Server 2003 book? I've got a bunch of the below to give-away & they're yours free - all in return for answering a simple question: Q: Given the upcoming Beta , and soon to follow, launch of SBS 2008, what's the...

With the launch of Small Business Server 2008 just around the corner (Jul-Sept), the last thing you want to do is stall a possible sale now whilst the customer waits for the new software to be released. Now's the time to be thinking about adding Software...

With thanks to the TechNet Edge team , a very timely Essential Business Server 2008 interview with one of the program managers, Bjorn Levidow. Bjojn covers the remote administration console, the easy recovery from problematic add-ins to EBS, and the licensing...

The Australian Partner Conferences awards are now open for submission & so drop everything and get your entry in before June 16th. See here for all the details: https://partner.microsoft.com/Australia/40043064 Though the conference this year is only...

Just a quick heads-up on this on behalf of the SMB customer team: The Microsoft SMB team are today sending a direct mail piece to a sample group of companies in the 5 to 49 PC segment. This mailing is simply a follow up to the piece we sent to the same...

May is a travel month for me & within the space of two weeks I'll be heading to Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane & various events around Sydney. I'll mostly be visiting SBSC & other partners as a way to get a better understanding of three key...

Great find by Nick Mayhew around the new Australian Microsoft Press online shop : www.mspress.com.au Partners can get a 50% discount on all online purchases in May - though you'll need to get a special code, check Nick's blog for details. Going forward...

If you were responsible for Small Business Server in Australia, what would you do to launch the new version later this year? :-) Don't worry - we have plenty of ideas & will be sharing the readiness, pricing, beta, partner, advertising, communications...

Interested in looking at a new business model? Or just want to learn more about hosting? Then get along to the series of Microsoft Hosting Days , kicking off in Adelaide on May 13th. Hosting is the fastest growing SBS license type in Australia & so...