EBS Release Candidate 1 unveiled - live from WPC

Hot off the presses (and a keynote demo), the EBS team announced the Release Candidate 1 version of EBS at Worldwide Partner Conference here in Houston.  As the Group Program Manager, I had the privilege of being the first to publicly show RC1 bits off to the world in the SMB keynote this morning with Mike Risse. This is microsoft’s biggest gathering of partners each year when we share some of our biggest partner news and information.

Essential Business Server has been in use in production (select companies through our TAP program) for months now, first on Beta 2, then with Release Candidate 0. RC 1 marks a major step toward shipping.

What is new in RC1?

In general an RC1 is about stabilizing the product and ensuring it is ready for a final release. But based on customer and partner feedback, we’ve introduced a few important things you asked for:

1. A rich setup including two stages to make EBS setup and configuration into your environment faster and more predictable. We’ve added a Preparation Wizard (a tool you can run independently from EBS to scan your existing environment to check for over 100 issues that could cause problems during a new installation)

         And we've added a second step, a Planning Wizard (a pre setup tool that allows users to plan out complex network topology and configuration options of their new configuration).

    2.  Sharepoint configuration and admin console integration

         With RC1, sharepoint is integrated into the setup flow.  Optimized for our ability to update, the installation includes a download of an application that sets up WSS to best practices, adds an Add On page into the admin console, and integrates Sharepoint into the Remote Web Workplace single access page.

Blogging live from Houston at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference,

- Eric Watson, EBS Group Program Manager