I've complained that Microsoft's adherence to this old-school product type has blinded it to the needs of its smaller customers—its Essential Business Server (EBS) product line, basically an upscale version of SBS for the midmarket, was unceremoniously killed after less than a year of availability because of this disconnect between the software giant and its customers' needs. But now Microsoft is listening: SBS will ship in a second product type, code-named Aurora, that's much closer to how I envisioned future SBS versions.
So instead of being a traditional SBS offering, Aurora is what Microsoft calls a "Solution Server." It's based on the R2 code base, yes, but doesn't offer any on-premises server tools beyond networking, security, and storage. Mostly, it's about hooking into cloud services, and when you consider that Microsoft offers stellar hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint, Communications Server, and more, this strategy starts to really make sense.
Although Microsoft's product plans are still in flux, the company sees Aurora as a solution for the very smallest of small businesses, those with up to 25 PCs. (SBS "7" serves up to 75 PCs.) In fact, it's going to market Aurora as "a super simple server for the very small business." You can install local servers on Aurora, but none of the traditional SBS servers come with the product.
If you're familiar with the next version of Windows Home Server, code-named Vail, then it might help to think of Aurora as a small-business, domain-based version of that product. That is, Aurora is super-simple, offers automated PC backups (both image-based and traditional file backups), and sits largely unattended in a back room somewhere.
Aurora servers can't join an existing domain, but you can create a domain. It utilizes the Drive Extender technology from Vail, so you can simply add drives and configure them to join a single, huge storage space that's unencumbered by drive letters or any of the complexity from RAID or related technologies. (SBS "7" won't include Drive Extender.
But I've been told that future versions of Windows Server, as well as Windows 8, will include Drive Extender.) Aurora will be sold and serviced primarily through Microsoft's partners, so expect some announcements around this product at the WPC this year.
Windows InTune Updates
We discussed Windows InTune previously. It's aimed at the mid-market, is only semi-managed (in that it doesn't require Active Directory but respects Group Policy-based policy settings), and is based loosely on the company's traditional, on-premises System Center offerings. InTune was made available, briefly, as a public beta a few months back but demand overwhelmed Microsoft's capacity and the program was quickly shut down.
Well, good news: A new round of public beta availability will be announced at the WPC in July. Microsoft told me that it will deliver the final version of InTune by April 2011. But I still have some questions, both around the target market (Why isn't this being offered to small businesses? It would be a great companion service for Aurora) and the pricing and licensing. Stay tuned.
Microsoft Layoffs
My sources at Microsoft tell me that the recent exodus of top-level management in the company's Entertainment and Devices division was involuntary. The reason is simple: After beating Palm in the PDA and early smartphone markets, Microsoft got lazy, and Windows Mobile development ground to a halt. This provided Apple with the impetus to enter the market, and now Windows Mobile has ceded market share to iPhone for three years in a row.
So the management team was kicked out. A new team was put in place to develop Windows Phone, which should ship in October/November of this year. Windows Phone is great, but it's years too late. And Microsoft's early release of the Windows Phone-esque KIN in May was such a disaster that it was killed several weeks later.
These missteps make shareholders jittery. So Microsoft will announce some layoffs to prove, in effect, that it's taking the situation seriously. I'm told that the total number of people laid off will number in the hundreds. And let's be clear: Microsoft's net employee count will continue to go up, since it's still hiring at a rate of 1,500 to 2,000 new employees each month.
So is Microsoft serious about correcting the mistakes that doomed its consumer efforts? If anything, Microsoft has only proven that it's not able to move as quickly as its competition. This, I think, is the biggest problem Microsoft will face in the years ahead.