Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

SBSv7 vs SBS Aurora – What’s the difference?

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Microsoft yesterday announced future versions of SBS which included both cloud and non cloud based versions.  What is the key differences between the two?  I’ve assembled this information based on what is on the Microsoft.com website announcements so far.

The names for SBS in this article are for reference only – MS have not yet named the final products.

Function SBS Aurora SBSv7
Maximum Users 25 Users 75 Users
Mail System BPOS Integrated Inhouse Exchange 2010
Server Backup Yes Yes
Client Backup Yes Yes
Remote Access Yes Yes

 

The new versions look pretty darn exciting as they merge in the needs of the clients we have now in the SMB space as well as the needs to update the core product.  SBSv7 and SBS Aurora look great and I’m looking forward to being able to publicly discuss and demo these products in the upcoming weeks.

How can you get involved???  Easy – sign up for the public beta here ASAP.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »

SBS 2008 R2 – Next Versions announced…

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

No news on the naming of the product yet, but today Microsoft announced details of the next versions of Small Business Server.  The big surprise… there’s TWO versions of the product, not one.  Details here  Both versions will have public beta available by the end of Summer (US time) – go here for the beta.  The two versions of the product however differ greatly from what many think.

Windows Small Business Server Code Name “Aurora” is the big secret here – it combines on premise functionality with cloud computing which many people have asked for.  It supports up to 25 users.  There will be BPOS integration via the console to make it dead easy for you to add users locally and in the cloud.

Windows Small Business Server 7 – is the more traditional onsite solution that is effectively an update of SBS 2008 and allows them to grow to up to 75 users.  It will contain Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange Server 2010 SP1, SharePoint 2010 Foundation, Windows Server Update Services 3.0 and in the Premium version SQL Server 2008 R2

Exact naming of the products and pricing has not been announced at this point, so stay tuned for more details as they come to hand.  In the meantime – sign up for the beta so you can get your hands on the product quick smart.

Tags: ,
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »

Apple Humour – does it scale?

Friday, July 9th, 2010

clip_image001I received this via email – so I can’t easily credit the source, but I thought it was quite funny and in reality it shows how things tend to work in the industry.  People get into the idea that if they do something once at a given size that they can just scale up from there and the world will beat a path to their door.  Classicly Apple seem to be on the right path with the iPhone and then the iPad (even though I don’t agree here).  Microsoft on the other hand make me wonder at times.  With the drive to move everything to the cloud, we are loosing sense of the scale and technology involved, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.  We will come to expect things are so easy when in fact they are complicated.  I wonder if we will therefore become complacent with how they deal with technology.

 

Food for thought over the weekend :-)

 

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Blog | 2 Comments »

Christmas in July – big announcements coming…

Friday, July 9th, 2010

Yes people there’s some big announcements coming on many fronts and early next week SBSfaq.com will have some exciting things to announce.  It’s almost like Christmas in July :-)   Some of these announcements will only be made to newsletter subscribers, so make sure you sign up to get the latest from us as soon as it’s available.

 Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Tags: ,
Posted in Blog | No Comments »

LiveMesh merges into LiveSync

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

I mentioned that Mark O’Shea had started blogging recently – good thing too – he’s got a heap of information stored in that head of his.  Recently he blogged about about the new Windows Essentials beta – and as part of this there’s a note in there about how LiveMesh and LiveSync will merge into one product and that the 5GB Mesh limit will be reduced.  It’s certainly worth checking out as I’ve been playing with both products and I’ve been looking more to move everything over to LiveSync vs Mesh due to some of the local replication features it has.

Tags:
Posted in Blog | No Comments »

What about the channel partners?

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Microsoft exec Frank X Shaw last week blogged about their favourite numbers here.  Now for an organisation that we are told is so channel focused, it really surprises me that in all the favourite numbers, this MS exec failed to mention how proud he is of the channel partners, the channel partner program or ANY of us that are out here selling his products for him.  In fact he failed to make mention of any of the channel at all.  I can only guess that in the drive towards the cloud, that this MS Exec is not so concerned about the channel partners that actually SOLD all those units that helped MS get to where they are today.  Surely the MS Partner Network is something to be proud of, given MS say they are not interested in a direct sales model. 

I should give thanks though… to the people like Eric Ligman and some of the local MS Australia people who do work in the channel – they are the stars…

Tags:
Posted in Blog | No Comments »

EBS 2008 is dead… no wait… it’s not…

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

It seems that just days before the official death of EBS 2008 (June 30, 2010), someone within Microsoft has decided that maybe it’s not so dead after all.  I reported back in March, that Microsoft had discontinued EBS 2008, but it seems I may have been wrong… or am I?

This blog post posted on June 25, 2010 shows that someone missed the memo about EBS being dead… Further more the author links to this article June 15, 2010 which talks about how good EBS is and how well suited for the market it is.  Sorry mate – Microsoft killed the product…or have they???  I wish they’d get the story straight.

Tags: ,
Posted in Blog | No Comments »

How can I learn to troubleshoot problems better?

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

One of the things I’ve tried to do here on my blog and in public is to teach others about how to investigate and troubleshoot problems.  It appears to be rubbing off as the SBS Support team at Microsoft are doing the same via their blog now.  They have started a new series of articles around Corner Cases – that is those funky issues that do not appear all the time but can take a while to resolve.  More importantly they are showing HOW they resolved the problem, what tools they used and why.  Here are two of the corner cases they’ve done recently – I’d suggest you follow them so as to learn more.

The Case in the Corner Series- Session Pool Exhaustion

Case in the Corner Series- Spiking CPU

Tags: , ,
Posted in Blog | 2 Comments »

Congratulations Amy for SBSC Partner of the Year

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Amy Babinchak – Owner of Harbor Computer Services and ThirdTier.net and fellow MVP has had her company Harbor Computer Services named as the winner of the Global SBSC Partner of the Year by the Microsoft Partner Awards team

This is a huge honour and due in no small part to the dedication of Amy and her team show to their clients and the market place in general. Congratulations Amy!  Well Done.  You can read a little more about their award here

Tags: , ,
Posted in Blog | No Comments »

Mark O’Shea Blogs – listen up Aussies.

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Mark O’Shea is the one to blame.  He’s the one to blame for getting me involved with Microsoft Australia just on 10 years ago now.  I thank him very much for this as it’s been a wild ride and there’s more to come.  Mark was the man back in the SBS2000 days that handled all the SBS questions from the reseller and it was him that helped to put a face on the SMB Technology side of things for many of us.  He was the one that got me involved in doing my first ever presentations on SBS which was in Adelaide and it was focused around doing what I was working on then (now known as a Swing Migration) from SBS 4.5 over to SBS 2000.  I was unique in that I was doing these when other resellers didn’t know how to… so Mark took me to task and we did a roadshow to help other resellers understand.  Therefore it’s all his fault :-)   Thanks Mark :-)

Anyway – after a long absence, Mark is back in the saddle and now has the role of SMB Partner Technology Advisor within Microsoft Australia.  He’s also started a blog and I recommend you all get into it as I know there will be gems of information there for all to learn from.  His blog is here

Tags: ,
Posted in Blog | No Comments »