With thanks as always to Scott Adams . Great Dilbert this week & particularly relevant to me given the number of random calls I get from partners on every topic imaginable - I guess that's bound to happen with the number of events I attend & business...

In an effort to better understand the needs & challenges of customers, we're kicking off a series of online polls on the Microsoft Australia Small Business site - this week its all around security. Check it out here. Feel free to fill it in yourself...

As you probably know, daylight saving now commences on the first Sunday in October and ends on the first Sunday in April in New South Wales, Victoria, the ACT, Tasmania & South Australia. This change affects Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office Outlook...

As you can imagine an organisation like Microsoft works with a rather large number of partner & customer communities & so our efforts to stay in touch & up-to-date are not always as effective as we'd like. But we try. A big part of this is...

As promised when summarising the feedback from the last series of SBSC roundtables (apologies for the delay), we would like to share our response to the questions & concerns that were raised. You can download the document here that shows the issue...

Great to see some media coverage coming through for SBS MVP Stu Applegate & the team at Business Computing Australia , Microsoft's SBSC Partner of the year . Check it out in the weekend's Courier Mail . Robbie

I must have overlooked this somehow when it first came out & so here you go, apcmagpro.com's: First look at Essential Business Server 2008. It's a solid companion piece to the author's, Paul Schnackenburg, review of SBS 2008 . Quick snippet: "Microsoft...

  With enduring thanks to Scott Adams . What a crazy couple of months. With TechEd, user group visits, partner roundtables, press interviews, distribution events, Partner conference, meetings with HP, Citrix, Kaseya, Intel, Dell, Optus etc, a kazillion...

The Windows Essential Server Solutions team in Redmond have released the official SBS & EBS virtualisation scenarios - one of the key pieces in the lead-up to the November 12th worldwide launch. Full details here: SBS 2008 virtualisation EBS 2008...

UPDATE: Unfortunately it seems there's a glitch with this download. Redmond is on it & I'll let you know as soon as its fixed. My apologies.   Great pick-up from my colleague David Overton in the UK - Small Business Server 2008 is now available...

Given that Small Business Server 2008 & Essential Business Server 2008 have now been released to manufacturing, I'm happy to report that both will be included in the next release of the Microsoft Action Pack. Check out the full listing of contents...

We're still waiting on the first shipment of Small Business Server 2008 to come in from our regional operations centre in Singapore & as soon as it arrives, we'll be sending it out to all the TechEd 2008 SMB Server pre-day attendees. As discussed...

Apologies for the delay - I've finally uploaded the slide decks from the TechEd 2008 SMB Servers pre-day & so please download at your leisure. These are the presentations that Nick, myself, Dean, Wayne & Lingan presented & they include loads...

News just in from Corp with Essential Business Server 2008 (EBS) being released to manufacturing (RTM) today. Supporting networks up to 300 PCs, the reviews of EBS have been very positive so far & with several hundred betas out there in the Australian...

The future is getting closer every day. Great article in today's Sydney Morning Herald about the first magazine in the world to be published using electronic ink. Just on the cover & an ad for Ford inside, but the possibilities are endless. Conjures...

As announced at last week's TechEd SMB Servers pre-day , the Australian ERPs for Small Business Server 2008 are as per below. I'm putting together a full listing of SKUs (including Academic, transition packs etc) & will get this up in the next couple...

Great pick-up from Nick Mayhew's blog around the upcoming Partner-to-Partner networking nights. Open to Gold, Certified & SBSC partners. This round will focus on Local Government & whilst there's no specific focus on SMB per se, it could still...

  Personal thoughts written on a soggy Saturday afternoon, so turn off now if you're looking for something a little more highbrow. Image courtesy of Jon at www.geek.on.net TechEd is done & dusted for another year meaning I can now get on with...

Lots of good conversations with a variety of media outlets at TechEd (CRN, MyBusiness mag, APC.com, Dynamic Small Business mag, itwire.com.au & others) & we're starting to see some coverage. Good article from Ian Yates at CRN here , finishing...

Well TechEd has finished for another year & my summary & thoughts will be coming soon. Before I get into that though I just HAD to share with you the single best thing I've seen since, well, I don't think I've actually seen anything this good...

With thanks to Greg Lipschitz , an SBS partner from Victoria, we have TechEdLive.com . Raw & regular posts on all things from the SMB Servers pre-day through to how to make the best paper plane. Lots of good feedback, video interviews & importantly...

This time tomorrow we'll be 2 hours into our SBS/EBS gab-fest as part of the TechEd 2008 SMB Servers pre-day & so if you're coming along, I thought I'd give you a little taster of what to expect. 10. Whilst we didn't make our initial target of 350...