Trends

Today I attended the Microsoft TS2 Briefing for Microsoft partners to gain some insight on what is going on in Microsoft's minds and see what technology trends are on the horizon. The briefing covered Small Business Server 2008 along with the Essential Business Server 2008 including migrating from SBS 2003. Additionally there was a discussion on Microsoft's Hyper-V virtual server, it's positioning against VMWare's ESX and how to set up SBS 2008 using Hyper-V. The other major topic was Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS).

There was too much information to provide a complete breakdown of all the information but here are a few highlights.

Small Business Server 2008 - A major differences between SBS 2008 and 2003 is that SBS 2008 is only available in 64-bit. 2003 was only available in 32-bit so there is no such thing as an in place upgrade. So migrating to 2008 will require new server hardware (although it is possible to virtualize the existing 2003 server on a seperate box then migrate back to the original hardware). For most it probably won't be a bad thing to get new hardware since 2003 has been around so long. See the SBS website at http://www.microsoft.com/sbs

Essential Business Server 2008 - All the features of SBS 2008 plus it includes Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 for efficiently managing the environment and 2007 Exchange Edge Security as a seperate role. See Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 Web site.

Business Productivity Online Suite - Delivers hosted communication and collaboration tools as a subscription. Products include Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, Microsoft Office Communications Online. See http://www.microsoft.com/online/default.mspx for more information.

Virtualization with Hyper-V - See http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv.aspx for complete details. Virtualization technology carries many benefits.