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EBS is dead. I’m sure you’ve all heard the news announced on the 5th March and seen the EBS blog.
To be honest it isn’t a big surprise to me and I can’t say I’m going to morn the loss for very long. We put a reasonable amount of time and effort in to incorporating it in to our portfolio of products but it never took off for us, or for Microsoft it would seem. Don’t get me wrong I think it was a good product but it was a victim of the change in the way we think about providing software and services these days.
One thing is for sure. If you doubted Microsoft’s commitment to cloud computing before, the culling of EBS should convince you they are deadly serious. For MS to take such a radical decision proves without a shadow of doubt that cloud computing is where they see the future.
The decision to kill off EBS comes just after Steve Ballmer’s speech on Microsoft’s cloud computing strategy at the University of Washington and for partners at least this has really driven the message home. Get with the cloud or go do something else.
The question being asked now of course is, “what about the future of SBS?” Well, I’ve been involved in some of the discussions with the SBS development team at Microsoft as to the route the development will take and although I can’t be specific as I’m under NDA I think it is safe to assume that SBS will be around for a while longer. The reason I’m confident of that is I suspect SBS will evolve to embrace the cloud rather than fighting against it which should help to secure its future in one way or another. Time will tell.