Microsoft Publically Announces SBS 2008 and EBS 2008 Pricing and Beta

As a Microsoft Small Business Server MVP I have had the privilege and opportunity to be involved with both these products as they have been progressing through their development cycle.  In my opinion Microsoft is working hard to answer business needs in the small and medium business space and I thank them for their efforts.  I know that people thanking Microsoft is not something you hear much of these days, but the Windows Essential Server Solutions teams (who comes up with these names?  ) has invested a great deal of time, energy, and money into researching our market segment and developing the tools to better serve the businesses in the small and medium business space (of which my own business is a part of).  This is technology and code, so there are going to be hassles for sure, but the overall productivity benefit to the SMB's who implement these solutions will be great.  Two major areas, the deployment process and the daily administration consoles, have been a major area of focus for both SBS and EBS.  They have been tailored to benefit both outsourced IT and in-house IT who are administering SBS/EBS networks.