The Sikh Geek

Someone on one the mailing groups was asking why everyone was getting so excited about SBS 2008 RC0, when it wasn’t close to being a shippable product and even given it’s release he wouldn’t go and install it straight away at a customers. Now, knowing the person who made the comment, I know he’s a thoughtful person and made a valid point.

So, here are my reasons but everyone should make their own choices about how they spend their time and what value it will bring them.

There have been a number of committed people on the private beta providing feedback and testing features etc for the product team to make it the best possible product that it can be. Although, I was on the private beta I have to say my input has been minimal and I really appreciate the time and effort some of peers go to in aiding the beta process. This process is not finished, things could still change and feedback is still required, bugs to be found and submitted. This is one of the key aims of the Public Preview to get it into the hands of people who will be using the technology day in and day out. Don’t necessarily assume the Product Team know it all, they are indeed clever people but I’m sure want to the make final release as solid as it can be.

Whilst this is an RC0 release many of the components are released products such as Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, WSS 3.0 and SQL Server 2008, so it gives you great way to learn about released products as well which you could sell to your customers now!

Partners will need to plan their future deployment strategies. If you were deploying ISA with the Premium Ed then what will replace it, will it be an appliance or ISA running on a second box. The dual NIC support is gone, so your network layout will change. Forefront and Live OneCare is now being included, are you going to switch to that or is your current AV vendor going to produce something to support SBS 2008.

Are you going to try out the migration tools in SBS 2008 to move customers over from SBS 2003 or maybe just give it a go on a customer site when you need to do it. Is the new backup tool going to give you all you need? Will you be able to do the remote monitoring in the same way you’ve lovingly crafted for your business? Are those commonly used LOB apps going to actually run on SBS 2008?

So, as you can see there is a lot to think about, plan for, test and discuss. I certainly need time to understand things, maybe everyone else is just cleverer than me?

Obviously, Microsoft will be doing the usual Sell, Sell, Sell on day one to hit their targets but at the end of the day we do what is best for our customers. We know how the uptake will be driven, by EOL hardware and new installations and I don’t expect that to change.