Q: (from Matt)
I know this wasn't a part of the talk today but my company is 90% focused on the SBS 2003 product right now. It's our bread and butter product. The information about the new SBS 2008 product has been limited so far. I would love to get in contact with someone at Microsoft and get our company involved in testing of the SBS 2008 product. We'd love to hit the ground running when the product is released.
Any help you could provide would be appreciated!
A:
Sorry we didn’t get you over into the Partner Track after the IT Pro track; we spent about an hour covering the new Windows Essential Server Solutions (WESS) which includes both Small Business Server 2008 (SBS) for the 5 to 50 desktop space and Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) for the 50 to 250 desktop space.
At this time, the Betas for both of these products are full, but there may be some form of Customer Technology Preview later this year. Both products are slated for release in about six months (SBS a little sooner than EBS)
Here are links to the recent announcements on the Microsoft web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/essential/default.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/essential/sbs/default.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/essential/ebs/default.mspx
Here is a link to a webcast I recorded for the West Coast Partner Community (the first 7 minutes are silent, so skip them)
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/view?id=JT9PHF&pw=8%5CC5rx9X8