Windows Essential Business Server 2008 has been released to manufacturing. On September 15, Eric Kidd – General Manager EBS, announced that the English version of Windows Essential Business Server 2008 went gold, with the promise that additional languages would follow soon. The Redmond giant is now ready to offer the product into a couple of flavors, namely Standard and Premium, depending on the components included in each package. But even though Windows Essential Business Server 2008 has reached RTM, general availability is still approximately two months away. Microsoft will only launch the offerings on November 12.

“Our #1 goal with EBS has always been to increase the satisfaction of our customers in midsize businesses – giving them a better experience and helping them to leverage the full value of their IT investment. We believe we can do that by tailoring our software to their specific needs, practices and preferences. The challenge is to take complicated technologies designed for the enterprise and make them more easily consumed by companies without enterprise-size resources,” Kidd stated.

Kidd revealed that Microsoft focused comprehensive efforts into understanding the business needs of midsize users in order to essentially adapt enterprise products to a new consumer segment. The Standard SKU of Windows Essential Business Server 2008 delivers Windows Server 2008, Microsoft System Center Essential 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and Forefront Security for Exchange Server. The Premium version delivers all the components of the Standard edition but also SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition.

“For midsize businesses, I’m confident that EBS is the best way to buy this software – Windows Server, Exchange, SQL Server, System Center Essentials (SCE), Forefront Security for Exchange and Forefront Threat Management Gateway. Whether it’s the integration and pre-configuration to best practices that’s baked-in; the vastly simplified and accelerated setup and migration, with a minimum of configuration needed; the defense-in-depth security included in the box; the EBS unified administration experience (with SCE) that gives the user one place to monitor system health and perform daily administration tasks across their entire environment; or the single/consolidated EBS license (including a new EBS license management system) and ~30% price discount our customers will find reason to be happier and we will achieve our goal,” Kidd added.


EBS migration interview and RTM