Microsoft Discontinues Essential Business Server

" The thing was just crazy complex, so this makes sense to me." Huh? It's a modular infrastructure suite with a slick management console that costs less than the individual components added up. How is that complicated? You've been "journalizing" too much lately.... What makes senses is this part: "midsize businesses are rapidly turning to technologies such as management, virtualization and cloud computing as a means to cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase competitiveness" translation: "We didn't market this product well, so nobody really understood it, or even knew about it. Instead, they bought our more expensive options, so we couldn't justify future R&D and support of this product with such low sales figures." Ya, that's a harsh response, but it's true. The product was good, and was a very good value for mid-sized businesses. It was a new product though, and mid-sized businesses that were built on existing Microsoft infrastructures already had the individual products, so they thought they would see a lot of migration pains in trying to fit into the confining space of a solution-based infrastructure. Then you have the recession, which saw many mid-sized businesses either expand into the enterprise space, or fold up. Small businesses likewise folded, but Small Business Server already had a well-established market base to build from. I've been going over the cost of cloud solutions lately. BPOS and the brand new System Center remote management stuff looks interesting, but on-premises stuff is still cheaper, even when you look at management costs. It's a fact that many customers of SBS will only ever purchase every-other version, not every version that's available. The same can be said of larger companies running Win Server 03 R1 and skipping all of the interim versions and are only now considering upgrades to Server 08 R2. When you pay a premium on continual upgrades to cloud services, the ROI gets lower because the platform isn't stable. If you could even rate it with a TCO, the cost would be unlimited because you'll never own it. Since you're continually paying, it's just not worth it.