Selling Microsoft Windows Small Business Server
With the recent announcements of Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008, they’ll be plenty of people swayed towards the bright lights of something new and shiney. However, the launch is expected in the second half of 2008, there’s plenty of time to look to what is currently available and understand the opportunity.
As luck would have it, a customer asked me where they should start in terms of understanding SBS and how they could begin to sell it. I thought I would post my email here so that perhaps it will help a few of you looking to get more involved in what I think is a very under-rated server product that is currently over shadowed by its big brother Windows Server 2008.
The key to selling SBS is to talk about solutions and not product. Of course the underlying goal of any business is to make a sale and a variety of Microsoft products combined with the appropriate hardware make this task easier to do. What SBS offers you as a business is a succinct way to approach any small business, identify their problems, and solve most of them with SBS and a range of complimentary products.
It’s easier to divide SBS into four areas in which you can pick and choose your focus when speaking to a client or prospect:
· Team working
· Communication
· Mobile Working
· Security
Breaking it down like so will allow you to show how SBS can enable businesses to do more with the technology and see their spend on IT as an investment as opposed to a ‘necessary evil’.
What Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 can do for your clients:
Protect your business and prevent data loss: SBS 2003 offers a more secure infrastructure that helps protect your business from unauthorised users and data loss with built-in firewall protection, security-enhanced remote access; tools to manage and monitor Internet access, block spammers and automatically removed dangerous email attachments to prevent virus attacks. In addition automatic data backup and the ability to retrieve accidentally deleted or restore previous versions.
Increase productivity and collaboration: SBS 2003 R2 provides a central location from which to store company data so employees can find and share the right information quickly, as well as communicate and work together on group projects.
Work beyond office boundaries: SBS 2003 R2 will allow you to access your email, internal Web sites, network files and even business applications more securely from any PC with an Internet connection. They also have the ability to access email schedules and contacts from virtually anywhere at any time using a device powered by Windows Mobile software.
Use Microsoft Office 2007 with Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2
SBS presents a great opportunity at further justifying and demonstrating the potential that the 2007 Microsoft Office System offers. Using a small business network, users have the ability to collaborate and centrally store data and files using Microsoft Windows SharePoint services. You can create shared workspaces where employees can collaborate on customer quotes, documents and other files. If we think about this in terms of the team working approach, you can justify an SBS investment because it will save them time, enable them to become more organised and help them stay focused on managing their customer relationships.
If your client has more than 25 employees, a better solution to Business Contact Manager may be Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which offers extensive capabilities and customisation. This will also offer additional sales through services; you may want to look at partnering with a CRM specialist to help you deliver these solutions. In addition, regardless of where their employees are, they will have full access to customer information – along with other networked resources in the office such as shared documents, printers and intranet sites. Thus, from a mobility focus, with a Windows Mobile device or a portable PC connected to the Internet, they can manage customer records and update the sales pipeline, even when they’re out on the road meeting new prospects and existing customers. Feel free to ask me if you would like further information on this.
Limitations with SBS 2003
There are a number of limitations with Windows Small Business Server 2003 (compared to Windows Server 2003, which is the next step up) which means that it may not be right for everybody:
SBS 2003 must be the first server installed on the network and must serve as the main log-on server. Additional servers can be added later.
SBS 2003 only supports up to 75 users or devices. However, you can buy a transition pack to protect your investment and transition to the next Windows Server product.
In my experience, businesses of over 50 users should really begin to look at Windows Server 2003 in any case. The closer the number of users gets to the 75 limit, the more error reporting is incurred. Typically, growing businesses with 50 employees would be looking to grow further and therefore could easily reach 75+ users in a short space of time. In these cases, SBS 2003 would not be a wise suggestion.
Further resources:
Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 home page
Information on Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008
How to become a Microsoft Small Business Specialist (becoming this will allow you access to SBS-focussed training and a community of partners who can help you develop in this area).
I encourage anyone else who would like to add additional links/resources/experiences to the comments below. Feel free to link through to your blogs if you have a particular post.
A SBS 2008 sales post will be made shortly… just got to wade through the mass of posts that have just landed in my RSS feeds inbox! 
Applications compatible with Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003