Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
SBS is a bad product. Yet, you’ll find many a lone consultant who is eager to resell it and to attain their sales certificate in the product. This certificate can be achieved by merely answering some multiple choice questions after working through a self-paced online marketing video about the product.
It’s this army of consultants who are to blame for the proliferation of Windows SBS installations. They lack the fiscal backing to purchase the standard range of Microsoft server products so they hone in on SBS because it’s what they can afford themselves (never mind the fact anyone can register for free as a partner with Microsoft then pay a relatively small fee for the Action Pack which includes full server products for your own production use.)
So, they sell it to others – because it’s what they know, and because they’re competing purely on price. They have to draw a fine balance between how highly powered they make the server and the version of Windows they include because they know the customer has a price.
Yet, these consultants are not doing their clients any favours. The customer could be told there’s another option. Why restrict yourselves with the clamps that SBS imposes? A Linux server would impose absolutely no software costs but yet provide a full server operating system, with file sharing, with printer sharing, with directory services, with e-mail, with web and intranet, with a firewall, with a database server. There are no limitations on the number of users. There are no more licensing fees. There are no scalability concerns. And there’s more money to then spend on the hardware.
Microsoft know better than their SBS resellers; they recognise this is a sensible option. And this is why the newest release of Small Business Server – presently up to its first release candidate stage but not yet final or shipping – is being bolstered with the advent of Windows Essential Business Server – or EBS.
EBS will be slightly more flexible. You can have a few EBS servers on the one domain. You get a Windows Server standard license thrown in too. Yet, despite the advantages Microsoft say it has you will note that ‘scalability’ is still not one of them.
We can make no mistake, no matter any arguments about the proportion of market share, Microsoft are keeping an eye on Linux. They aren’t ignoring it, they can’t ignore it. They’ve resorted to imitation and also to beefing up their product offerings. If you like what Microsoft are producing, you can thank Linux for at least part of it.
Read on for PART TWO of this article, explaining why consultants recommend SBS.
David Bass
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