Microsoft lobs licensing liposuction at Server 2012
Slims down to four builds, sheds Home and Small Business Server
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Microsoft has unveiled licensing terms for its upcoming Windows Server 2012, slimming down to four versions and ending the Home and Small Business Server options.
"Windows Server 2012 delivers a dramatically simplified licensing experience," says Redmond. "Shaped by feedback from customers and partners, the new Windows Server licensing approach will help make choosing the right Windows Server easier while delivering the following benefits."
Those benefits will come in four flavors: Datacenter, Standard, Essentials, and Foundation, all with similar levels of functionality but with differing support for virtualized and cloud environments. Microsoft is also switching to a per-processor pricing model, with one license covering two processors and more options based on the number of virtual machines being run.
Redmond suggests that less is more in server builds
The popular Small Business Server and Home Server editions are being folded into the Essentials build (Foundation is for OEMs only), and the current high performance computing edition is being replaced with the Enterprise and Standard builds and supported with a free HPC Pack 2012.
No final release date has been given for the new operating system, but it is widely expected to launch concurrently with Windows 8 client edition before the end of the year. ®
COMMENTS
As a small business owner, and systems administrator for SME clients...
…thanks for pissing on small businesses everywhere. No, honestly, thank you.
Seeing as I run one of the few local consulting companies with any real world experience in CentOS/RHEL migrations, you guys just paid my mortgage. Between the hostile licensing and Metro...
...what can I say except thanks?
The popular Small Business Server and Home Server editions
"The popular Small Business Server and Home Server editions are being folded into the Essentials build"
Yeah, because people who bought a $60 WHS 2011 license are going to shell out $400 for Essentials.
Re: As a small business owner, and systems administrator for SME clients...
When have I ever said I trusted Microsoft, hmm? I have said - and I maintain to this day - three things:
1) They have some great technology. Server 2012, System Center 2012, Hyper-V 3.0, SMB 3...they make shite a lot of the time (Metro), but they also turn out top notch stuff too.
2) They have a lot of good people at that company who are dedicated to making the best products in as open and standards-compliant a manner as possible. They also have a bunch of derpy proprietary lock-in fetishists, but significantly less of them in the past few years than the decade before that.
3) Microsoft's licensing department is powered by sadness and the tears of the innocent. There is nothing - nothing whatsoever - positive that can be said about them. Every customer- friendly move the rest of Microsoft makes which might earn them a little customer loyalty is instantly undone by licensing.
Whatever goodwill they might have earned through openness, kick-ass tech or so forth they immediately flushed down the toilet with user-hostile decisions (mandatory nature of Metro) and everything-hostile licensing.
I do not trust Microsoft. I will not trust Microsoft until they fly my ass down to Redmond to help them deal with their horrifically negative public image and help set licensing in the SME space to rights. (And actually IMPLEMENT those changes!) I am not far; I can even drive.
Ordinarily I abhor travelling, but I would be willing to go out of my way to help MS help SMEs. SMEs are my clients, after all. In the meantime however, every hostile licenceing decision they make to try to increase revenue results instead in a loss of more customers.
I can and do respect the technology Microsoft brings to the table. I can and do respect truly excellent individuals within Microsoft - like Jose Barreto - who strive to make the products on offer the best they can. I simultainiously believe wholeheartedly that Microsoft is pissing away its market, its customer base and its future.
People are voting with their wallets.
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