Microsoft announced a new server for small businesses, though one should not confuse it with a new version of the company's Small Business Server product.
The latter is a bundle of Windows Server and Exchange, among other things, for businesses with 50 or fewer people while the new product, Windows Server 2008 Foundation, is only the operating system and is aimed at single-processor servers with fewer than 15 users.
The new Windows version is Microsoft's answer to the server equivalent of Netbooks, ultra-low cost servers aimed at the smallest of businesses. The product will only be sold preinstalled on new machines.
CEO Steve Ballmer mentioned the product was coming and outlined the rationale at a meeting with financial analysts in February.
"From a revenue perspective, we are introducing a new low cost, low price, low functionality Windows server (version)," he said. "If you take a look at it, as server prices, hardware prices have come down, we don't exactly have a Netbook phenomenon, but if somebody can buy a $500 server, they're a little loathe to spend $500 for the server operating system that goes with it. So we have something that's akin to Netbook at the server level, and we'll be introducing our Foundation edition over the next month or two."
Microsoft also said that, through the end of September, it will donate a portion of its revenue from Windows Server Foundation to TechSoup.org and Telecentre.org, two groups that help bring technology to nonprofit organizations.
"We see this as an opportunity not only to deliver a technical foundation for business growth, but also to create a financial foundation for community," Ballmer said in a statement on Wednesday.
There wasn't a ton of news out of day 2 of Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, but the company did announce a few product milestones.
Its small and midsize business server products have both hit the near-final "release candidate" stage. Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (formerly code-named Centro) and Small Business Server 2008 (nee Cougar) are scheduled to launch and be fully available on November 12.
Microsoft also said its recently completed Hyper-V virtualization hypervisor is now available via Windows Update, as expected. The product had been available since late last month, but only as a manual download.
The software maker said it distributed 1.5 million copies of the pre-release version, though if I'm not mistaken, every copy of Windows Server 2008 came with a pre-release version of Hyper-V.
And, as I noted on Tuesday, Microsoft also made available several new online tools for partners, including Digital Forum--a social-networking tool for partners to share tips, ideas, and war stories, as well as Microsoft PinPoint--an updated version of its online catalog of partner offerings.
Microsoft is set to announce Tuesday that it is launching a "public preview" program for two server products based on its Windows Server 2008 operating system.
The products, one aimed at small business and the other at midsize firms, combine the server operating system with Exchange Server and other software into a bundle designed to cost less and be easier to install than acquiring the products separately.
Small Business Server 2008 is an update to an existing small business product, while Windows Essential Server Solutions 2008 (formerly ) is a new product, .
Microsoft plans to hit the release candidate stage for the midsize business product on Tuesday, with Small Business Server slated to hit that milestone in the coming weeks. At that point, the products will be made available broadly for public testing. Both have been in more limited beta testing for some time.
"There's a lot of pent-up demand," said senior product manager Joel Sider. "People want to put it through its paces."
Final release for both is slated for before the end of the year, Sider said.
The two products come in a couple of different flavors, with a charge for the server software and for each computer that connects to the server. In general, though, Sider said that the midsize product offers around a 30 percent savings compared with buying all of the components separately, while Small Business Server is priced at a 35 percent to 45 percent discount.
Microsoft did change the balance of the charges this time around for Small Business Server, hiking the server price and lowering the cost for computers that connect to the server. In general, Sider said, companies will pay less, though some smaller firms may see their costs go up.
"It can be (more) in some cases," Sider said. "At most it might be a couple hundred dollars more."
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