SMBNation – Session 2 Migration The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Session #2 Jeff Middleton, the self proclaimed King of Swing, is up on stage now talking about SBS 2008 migrations. He listed all the features of SBS 2003 and then in one click turned it into SBS 2008. He then blew away the myth for everyone that the migration process to SBS 2008 will be so simple. Going back to my earlier post today on the SMBNation Keynote if we continue to undersell ourselves to our customers, if we continue to underbid the VALUE that we provide to the customers business then we will be out of business.

Migrations to SBS 2008 will NOT be simple. Sure the SBS team have provided a migration wizard , but having been through this process with one of my clients already, I have to admit it is NOT a no brainer. It requires good planning, preparation of the existing environment and patience. It will require minimal down time, and a large portion of it can be done remotely, but it will require TIME. Time translates to $$ for us all. Time translates also to potential RISK. Risk to the customer, risk to ourselves. You will want to seriously look at how you plan to move to SBS 2008, you will want to plan it accordingly. You will ALSO want to consider that a FRESH INSTALL might be the best solution for you and the customer. Clearly this is something that you need to think about. Make sure that you do not undervalue the things that you can do and make sure that you do not just do the same as you did yesterday because it might not be the right thing for tomorrow.

Jeff will offer his own variation of Swing Migration as well as supporting what Microsoft have done. I m actually writing a book at the moment on SBS and one section of that will deal with how I have optimised the Microsoft methods myself and what I am doing for my customers. having been through the process I plan to not only focus on the technical aspects of it, but also on the business side of things, the timeline, the planning, the preparation.