SBS 2008 and EBS 2008 Pricing Released

Microsoft have today released the US pricing for Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008. The official announcement is here. In addition, they have announced changes in how they will deal with Client Access Licenses (CALs) for SBS 2008 in allowing the purchase of single CAL increments, therefore making it easier for clients to stay correctly licensed.

Today Microsoft announced the following prices for the Windows Essential Server Solutions family:

• Windows Small Business Server 2008 Standard Edition software, including five CALs, $1,089 (U.S.); additional CALs $77 each (U.S.)
• Windows Small Business Server 2008 Premium Edition software, including five CALs, $1,899 (U.S.); additional CALs $189 each (U.S.)
• Windows Essential Business Server 2008 Standard Edition software, including five CALs, $5,472 (U.S.); additional CALs $81 each (U.S.)
• Windows Essential Business Server 2008 Premium Edition software, including five CALs, $7,163 (U.S.); additional CALs $195 each (U.S.)

Whilst Australian pricing has not been announced as yet, it is hoped by the community that Microsoft Australia will look favourably on the current US$ > AUD$ conversion rates and ensure that the local pricing is more favourable than it has been in the past.

Ok – so what else have they mentioned here that might not be clear?

CALs – you only need to purchase Premium CALs for those users who access the Premium features eg SQL 2008 – this means that you can have 25 users in your SBS Premium network with Standard CALs and only 5 users with Premium CALs if those 5 users are the only ones accessing SQL server. That’s a real cost saving for the Small Business owner.

Outlook 2007 License – is not included in the SBS CAL anymore. This is primarily due to the fact that Exchange 2007 no longer includes it and the SBS product inherits this from their licensing model. Microsoft have statistical information to show that people are purchasing office which includes Outlook anyway, so this actually reduces the potential cost for the end user in the long run. The Outlook Web Access experience in Exchange 2007 is greatly enhanced too so this makes the user experience when away from the office far better than before.

ForeFront for Exchange and OneCare for Server – they’ve included a 120 day trial version so that out of the box your server has protection from bad things such as SPAM and Virus infection. It’s incomplete however as they provide no protection for the client computers and no way to centrally manage the entire operation. For me personally, I’ll be replacing this with Trends’s WFBS product due out shortly as this gives me all that I need to centrally manage my network.

Ok – so that’s a brief summary – I’ll be writing more later this week.