Michael Leworthy. senior product manager for Windows Server SMB, presented about Windows Small Business Server Essentials on Sunday at the TechEd Reviewers' Workshop. He focused mainly on Essentials, but the most interesting thing to me was this slide, summarizing what different versions of Windows Server offer small businesses:

As for Essentials itself, it aims to give small businesses features that would usually require big-business IT staff.

"Our value is ease of deployment and ease of management," Leworthy said.

Essentials uses a dashboard that simplifies management. The "real" Windows Server configuration is still available underneath, but with the dashboard you have a smaller, simpler range of options. For example, instead of assigning your users to a large number of different admin groups, you simply say whether each user is an "admin" or "user."

The dashboard also indicates user status, such as if a user needs an update. Essentials also offers automatic backup of any local PCs that connect to your domain and substantial integration features for Office 365.

Learn more about Small Business Server on the Microsoft SBS page.