Microsoft discontinues Essential Business Server

I guess it proved, as I predicted, to be not so essential after all.

Microsoft attributes the discontinuation to "new IT trends" but the product is less than two years old and the trends were taking shape long before that. In fact, in the post linked above, I discuss those trends at some length... more virtualization, less hardware reliance (where EBS required more physical servers than preceding products), less costly hosted alternatives. Those things were obvious enough to potential customers that, by some estimates, less than 100 bought the thing... this despite the predictable excitement of such a money-maker for the Microsoft specialists who form the core of the sales team for the company among SMBs.