New IT Trends Bring Change to Mid-Market Product Line

Today Microsoft announced that effective June 30, 2010, Microsoft will discontinue future development of Windows Essential Business Server (EBS), the infrastructure solution we designed specifically for midsize businesses. This blog post is to specifically answer the question around whether the change affects other Microsoft solution products.

The short answer is, no.

In no way does today’s EBS announcement impact Windows Small Business Server, Windows Home Server and Windows Server 2008 and R2.

Our decision to discontinue future plans for Windows Essential Business Server was based on several factors, but most notably in response to midsize businesses making a rapid shift towards technologies such as management, virtualization and cloud computing as a means to cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase competitiveness.  As it happens, those technologies are offered today through other Microsoft solutions, and midsized customers are adopting them, including Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft System Center, Microsoft Exchange Server, and the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS).

We believe that streamlining our server product portfolio will provide clarity for customers and partners to determine which option might be right for them.

Microsoft remains fully committed to small and medium-sized businesses. EBS customers can look forward to continued support and a number of options for continuing with EBS or transitioning to other technologies.

For more information, please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/ebs.