SBS 2008 Buzz at SMB Summit
[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Aanal Bhatt]
Hello from Dallas, TX - about 30 of us from Redmond are here at SMB Summit at our first ever partner readiness event for both Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008.
I did the opening this morning with an Intro to SBS alongwith Becky Ochs, a program manager on the SBS development team to a room packed with 400+ partners. I highlighted how we've really listened to partner and customer feedback with this version and made some really cool changes - for example, the ability to buy single CALs, instead of the current 5 CAL pack; creating a strong LOB platform by moving Premium Edition to a separate box, and replacing Workgroup Edition with SQL Server Standard Edition; the ability to run TS in App Mode on this second server. Partners kept cheering and applauding at everyone of those & when asked what their top 1-2 favorite things in SBS 2008, we kept hearing over and over - 'its hard for me to say. i like so much about what's coming in this new version'.
Stay tuned for more on this - we're very excited to see so much partner excitement as we're unveiling this product for the first time to our partners!
On a side note, I just noticed that Wayne Small & Dean Calvert, 2 SBS MVPs from Australia have been upto some mischief, so the excitement is certainly not restricted just to Dallas, TX: check it out
Aanal Bhatt, Partner Marketing, Windows Essential Server Solutions
