Midmarket IT Pros more familiar with EBS 2008 than Hyper-V in a recent study

Midmarket IT Pros are more familiar with EBS 2008 than Hyper-V in the U.S. and China.  These midmarket IT Pros were interviewed as part of a Microsoft Dynamics study published internal to Microsoft in December 2008.  These findings are decent, considering EBS's time in market, marketing budget & resources (Where are EBS robot ads?) and interest in virtualization.  Since more than 1/3 of the IT Pros interviewed were outside of EBS's total addressable market, EBS would have surpassed Hyper-V and other Microsoft products in more geographies if IT Pros interviewed were limited to EBS's addressable market.  While IT Pros may be familiar, this study did not measure IT Pros' perception of EBS, e.g. unique business value, Administration Console, lower total cost of ownership, increased productivity (IT Pro and end-user), 300-pages of best practices, etc.

Low budget EBS v1 of IT 24-7

EBS v1 mod 1 IT 24-7 with a tattoo

Messaging Guidance and Analysis

If you are a Microsoft employee, I posted valuable EBS messaging information on my internal blog.  A recent study in the U.S., U.K. and Germany verifies IT Pro pain points, but also includes an unexpected takeaway.

MS Partners may find some of this information valuable for business development, so if you are interested, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary.  They should be able to provide you relevant, releasable information.   If there is enough interest, I may provide worldwide partner information.

Windows Server 2008 in EBS. "Windows Server 2008 is everything that IT buyers asked for"

 

Windows Server 2008: Windows also rises

While Vista crashed and burned, Microsoft's new server OS became the upgrade Windows shops can't refuse

By Doug Dineley

December 26, 2008

"The advances beyond Windows Server 2003 seem too numerous to count."

IT investment in productivity lagging reductions in capital costs

In response to the economic indicators and/or loss of revenue, some companies first started cutting capital expenses, then operating expenses including employees.  While budgets are reviewed constantly, budgets are typically reallocated upon reducing operating expenses to maintain productivity and revenue with reduced resources.  Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) can assist businesses in both reducing capital costs by reducing server count, reducing operating expense (IT MRO), and increasing productivity of the IT staff and more importantly end-users.  Trends in IT sales will be interesting over the next couple of months to see if there is an upsurge in investment following the unfortunate recent lay-offs.  Hopefully, the market reads about our business value, including our customer evidence from around the world, and at least evaluates Windows EBS when reducing costs and increasing productivity.  Microsoft subsidiaries around the world are gathering additional local evidence.

I have internally posted a presentation with relevant evidence that discuss how EBS can help your business significantly lower costs and increase productivity.  This presentation speaks directly to the measurable business benefits of EBS, no fluff.  If you are a Partner, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary for the presentation.  If not, please contact your local partner and request the presentation.

Happy Holidays

I will be working throughout this holiday season, taking a couple of days off here and there.  Wishing you a safe and peaceful holiday season.

Case Study released on 15DEC08

I understand many markets desire local case studies, but I suspect you can translate a majority of the business value across the world.  The challenge for any market and business is to decide on the ROI for their specific market, their segment and individual business; however, the reduced costs and increase productivity should translate to any market.  Microsoft subsidiaries are working on local case studies around the world.

Touchstone Behavioral Health is a nonprofit organization that provides a range of youth behavioral health services, including anger management, crisis intervention, psychiatric evaluations, support groups, and parenting classes. The Glendale, Arizona–based organization has six sites throughout Arizona and employs 180 people.

EBS provided the following benefits to Touchstone Behavioral Health:

• Core business value
• Up to 5,000 More Client Hours Annually
• New End-user Services

• Lower TCO
• IT Work Reduction of 30 Hours Weekly
• Lower Licensing and Energy Costs (Green IT)
• Enhanced Reliability and Security
• IT Infrastructure Supporting Growth

Read the details of the case study here.

Upgrade from SBS, Windows Server 2008 and Exchange 2007

Solutions Pathway provides additional discounts/credits for current SBS, Windows Server 2008 and Exchange 2007.  If you are looking to lower your Total Cost of Ownership with EBS and/or expecting to outgrow the 75 limit user limit for SBS, check out the additional discounts you may qualify for.  The site has a lot of information, possibly too much, so please contact your Microsoft partner with questions.   Microsoft Partners have a different portal.

 

On a side note, some people want all EBS information available on the EBS site, I mean ALL, while others want an easy to read overview that provides them enough information to decide to investigate further with a Microsoft Partner.  What do you think?  Not enough information on www.microsoft.com/ebs?  Too much?  There is a survey to the right.

TCO & Productivity

I use to work at General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems modeling information systems reliability and lifecycle costs, hence TCO.  The government recognizes from historical data and modeling that greater than 60% of the cost of systems (TCO) occurs following initial acquisition and deployment.

While lowering costs, most businesses want to ensure they maintain, or even increase, their competitive edge.  This is a rough Venn diagram of customer quotes that include measurable, relevant results.  The purple text are as a result of both lower TCO and increased productivity.  Complete customer case studies are available here.

Is EBS on your holiday wish list?

Although this is my personal blog, I can't legally guarantee that EBS will save your company money and increase your company's productivity, so you will need to rely on the documented results of our EBS customers.  Plus you wouldn't believe me anyway.  Real-world results are far more convincing.

SBS on the CBS Early Show moved to 20DEC08

SBS will now be on the CBS Early Show on December 20th, instead of tomorrow.

SBS on CBS's Saturday Early Show this Saturday

SBS will be demonstrated on CBS's Saturday edition of the Early Show this Saturday as part of a "green initiative" story.  EBS is delivers much greener ROI, more significant server consolidation and greater impact on mobile workers, i.e. working on the road or from home.  EBS has stronger green customer evidence posted in this blog and could have used the coverage as a brand new product.

EBS is a Solution with Technologies, Features and Business Value Only Found in EBS

While speaking to a Microsoft MVP, Gold Certified Partner yesterday at a meeting, I was hoping to gain his insight into the value EBS brings to his business and his customers. Instead he proceeded to talk about EBS as a bundled solution, and how he hasn't heard about the value EBS brings to him and his customers.

There was an interesting interview, The 'Buyology' Behind The Way We Shop, yesterday on Talk of the Nation, a NPR show. While the story referenced consumer products, Walter from Kansas City, one of the callers, was "overall offended by marketing", called marketing "legal lying", referred to marketing as manipulation, and mentioned regulation.

My goal is not so evil. I need to raise awareness of the Windows Essential Business Server and communicate its unique value, i.e. product differentiation, to midsize businesses and to the partners serving those businesses. Yes, EBS contains a bunch of Microsoft technology and products you can purchase separately, but it also contains technologies, features and measurable business value you cannot find outside of EBS:

1. Unified Administration Console
2. Server consolidation
3. Over 300 pages of best practices out-of-the-box
4. Simplified licensing for multiple technologies
5. Competitively priced

I suspect the misperception that EBS is a discounted, bundled solution is due to market testing some EBS technologies and a price point a couple of years ago. As I have discussed with my peers in the past and studied in many business cases, you can have a great product, but if nobody is aware about the product and/or its value, then market adoption will be weak. Help me get the word out there.

Green IT & Lower Total Cost of Ownership

IBM's latest commercial on Green IT hits the mark on addressing both environmental and total cost of ownership.  Whether you are concerned about the environment and energy dependence, lowering maintenance, repair & operations (MRO) costs, or all of the above, you want Green IT.   Don't be fooled by Greenwashing though.

BusinessWeek discusses Green IT in this article.  eWeek.com discusses 5 Steps to Green IT for infrastructure, including power consumption.

EBS 2008 helps you consolidate servers.  Less servers, less energy to power the servers and cool your server room.  EBS 2008 is not just hype on consolidation and Green IT.

“We were consuming about 12,000 to 14,000 BTUs [basic transmission unit] per hour in our data center, and we’ve reduced that to about 7,000 BTUs per hour by reducing our physical server count from 16 to 7. We’ve cut our power consumption in half.”

Tim Dreyling, Information Systems Manager, WASSER Studios

Read more about Five Ways to Reduce Data Center Server Power Consumption and how to make an impact, calculate your carbon footprint.

You need to start somewhere.  EBS 2008 helps lower TCO throughout the product lifecycle.

While I can one conventional car from 1999, I drive a Prius and motorcycle.  Unfortunately, the Prius doesn't have a lower TCO, but my past and present motorcycles have significantly lower TCO.  I could be greener, but it's a start. 

Financing EBS with Microsoft Finance Promotion

Are feeling the squeeze of the credit crunch?  Are you looking to finance EBS, hardware, partner services and other Microsoft software, e.g. Dynamics CRM? 

Microsoft is offering a SmartPay promotion.  This promo provides no payments for the first 6 months of the term of the loan.  Please read all the details and legal stuff here.

Microsoft Finance and this promotion are valid in:

• North America: US, Canada
• EMEA: UK, Germany, Spain, Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland and Netherlands
• APAC: Korea, Australia, and New Zealand
• LATAM: Brazil