So I’ve spent some time today here in Redmond with the SBS Product team. I and other MVPs are hearing from Microsoft on what they have planned for the next version of SBS aka Cougar due out some time after Windows Server 2008 is launched. I wish I could tell you all the cool things that they have shown us, but naturally a tight NDA covers that and they’ll sue my pants of if I reveal details of what they have talked about. Ok that being said, what can I talk about? What do you need to skill up on now to be prepared for SBS Cougar?
Cougar will be built on Longhorn Server and will include things like Exchange 2007 etc beyond that it’s all conjecture until MS release real information. Cougar is 64 bit only what that means is that moving from current SBS to SBS Cougar will not be an in place upgrade that much they have said already. Ok then what will it mean? It means some form of swing migration or similar will need to take place. It also means that your going to need to look carefully at any line of business applications that might run ON the SBS 2003 server right now and assess if they will be able to run on a 64 bit platform. This includes checking with the vendor as to support for their product on a 64 bit platform. It also means that you will need to ensure that the drivers you get are compatible with 64 bit. Lots to learn!
I can say without giving anything away in particular, that the SBS team are listening VERY much to the requests that the community has been making over the past 4+ years for features and improvements for SBS, and that the product I’ve seen and played with is both very new and very exciting. It’s going to take us to another level of SBS well beyond that we are at now.
I plan to be running some SBS Cougar Prep courses in Australia in March 2008 to start to get people ready for SBS Cougar. More details on http://events.sbsfaq.com when they are announced.
With RWW they’ve integrated the….. and then made it more aware of the ….. and then based on the ….. they will provide you with …… wow that’s fantatic right?
Stay tuned more J
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