ANTenna Blog -- Hardware & Software

Microsoft's latest server offering is priced to compete against Linux in the small-biz market. Some companies, however, might find a few devils in the details.

As bMighty's Ben Tompkins noted yesterday, Windows Server Foundation is designed for companies with less than 15 employees. With 70 percent of the SMB market still getting by without a dedicated server, it's a lucrative market for any OS vendor.

One of Foundation's biggest selling points is clearly its price. Microsoft will partner with hardware OEMs to offer complete systems for less than $1,000, including both hardware and a server software license.

If the up-front price tag looks appealing, however, the long-term costs of using Foundation could take some smaller companies by surprise:

• First, keep in mind that Foundation's target market -- companies with fewer than 15 users -- isn't just a marketing crutch. Microsoft will deliberately configure Foundation so that it can't support more than 15 users. If a company outgrows this limit, it will have to upgrade.

• Foundation also will not support virtualization. Microsoft asserts that smaller companies buying their first servers won't need virtualization anyway. That seems a bit disingenuous, since Microsoft certainly doesn't plan to give Foundation users a chance to test this dubious assumption.

• Bear in mind that each Foundation server license is tied to an OEM's hardware. If a company's server dies, it can't simply re-install Foundation on a replacement system.

• Foundation will not ship with any bundled software or automated setup tools. This is a big change from Microsoft Small Business Server, which includes a number of wizard-based configuration tools and an integrated software stack consisting of Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Forefront Server.
  

According to Microsoft, it won't include configuration tools with Foundation because it expects its OEM partners to handle this aspect of the server setup process. That approach may work for some companies, but it might not for others -- and in any case, it places an additional burden upon small businesses that need to vet OEMs carefully to ensure they will get what they need to make Foundation work effectively for them.

Perhaps I'm damning Foundation with faint praise, but it will still fit the bill for many small businesses. I think that's especially true for companies that can work within the 15-user limit for the foreseeable future, don't have any need for virtualization or an integrated software stack, and plan to put Foundation to work doing meat-and-potatoes workgroup file- and print-serving duties.

On the other hand, I think that Foundation will be a less compelling match for companies that expect to grow rapidly and/or want to keep their IT options open. And frankly, no matter what Microsoft's reasoning, I find its insistence upon tying a Foundation server license to a particular piece of hardware underwhelming.

Microsoft clearly needs an entry-level server offering capable of taking on Linux in the small-business market. Whether Foundation will do the job, however, remains to be seen.