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zdnet

With a nod to the new economic realities pushing users towards lower-priced options, Microsoft took the wraps off its new low-end Windows Server release, known as Windows Server 2008 Foundation, on April 1.

As CEO Steve Ballmer indicated in February the new offering is Microsoft’s equivalent of a netbook operating system — but designed for servers instead of client machines. Foundation Server is a cheaper, somewhat scaled-back version of its existing Windows Server product meant for preloading by OEMs on their entry-level server systems. Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo already have expressed interest in the Windows Server Foundation release, according to Microsoft officials.

“The economics of the market are very different since a year ago,” said Iain McDonald, Director of Product Management for Windows Server. “We have a great product in Windows Small Business Server, but it really is a full-featured server” that isn’t well suited to run on the growing class of low-end servers out there that cost a few hundred dollars.

I’m off to read up on this new server product. I think it’s a great idea, now I can hear my colleagues claim, but it lacks…. but you know what, it might be just what the average SME needs. We need to balance functionality with affordability and ease of use, whether it’s Microsoft, Sun or one of the Linux platforms, that it delivers what you as an end user need is all that matters. I’ll need to check it out, just one question how much cheaper is it? My biggest thing with Windows has always been the actual purchase price, if you take Vista/XP for example, if they reduced the cost ever so slightly I’m sure you’d find more people buy it.

My only question (like Vista) are we in danger of creating an administrative overhead with these different versions of Windows Server from a customer point of view, before we effectively had standard or enterprise for clustering, (as well as Itanium editions), now we’ve got a lot more choice, options?

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