The SBS Prostitute

Just wanted to offer something to ponder over the weekend. This entire week and its relevant absence of SBS has made me feel quite bad about the state of respect the small guys (rightfully) get. I’ve probably been asked about 10,000 times this weekend what it is I do with SBS, usually with a very puzzling look on their face. So here is my elevator pitch (to the techies):

“We’re a hosting company that provides SBS to customers that either could not afford, support or properly deploy a server in their environment. We enable IT consultants to provide fully configured SBS server in under 2 hours for $99 a month and we take care of the entire process – from setup and configuration all the way to continuous backup and practive monitoring and security investment. We basically bring in a server where it would otherwise not be able to exist or be unprofitable for an IT consultant to deploy one and we give people enterprise quality software with the comparable support“

And what do I get in return? Well, thats something I have thermed as “SBS Prostitute” view.

Oh, you poor soul, I guess you do have to make a living too.

Awe, well, do you enjoy it or do you just do it for the money?

Were you mistreated when you were young?

Now my elevator pitch is pretty close to the SBS goal, bring in a collection of Microsoft servers that make sense for the small business at a price they can afford where it profits both the business, the consultant and Microsoft. Server in small business == more money spent on additional servers, application and services.

However, by being virtually absent from TechEd the SBS team has all but confirmed the relative obscurity of the product and as something not to be taken very seriously. I’ve met plenty of people this weekend that were selling straight 2003 server and Exchange instead of SBS to small businesses, which on surface is good for Microsoft because they make money, but I doubt its good for the SBS team – they’ve got sales goals too you know. And it’s not great news for Microsoft – by selling an OS without a built in database, security management and more you are leaving out critical features that the IT solution shop may not offer because they bring up the cost of the deployment and effectively halt the opportunity to upsell the product – no CRM, no MOM, no LCS – unless they part with a lot more money… at which point Linux sounds like a good alternative. And you know, Linux may just get in for Jabber, or Nagios, or vTiger or SugarCRM…. but it may stay for more and for far longer.

I sure hope someone at Microsoft is considering these factors. Just out of curiosity, how much more would it have cost to remove one chair from the floor and add 4 sq ft and a side panel for SBS? I’ll help you – $0, you had two empty spots. For what its worth, I understand why it was not there (don’t want to promote crippleware, business bundles, not a target SBS audience) but I can tell you that you had potential customers in the audience that you’ve chosen to ignore.