SAVE: Pre-Order SBS 2008!!
Pre-Order SBS 2008 Premium: Save $200 to $4500 in Value!!
I’m not normally in the business of literally marketing Microsoft products. What I do believe in is sharing information about great product opportunities, and this is a huge one if you are interested in upgrading with multi-server operations.
Really, I’m not kidding, this isn’t a sensational headline. It’s quite real value, it’s a set of legitimate Microsoft options that expires in summary on October 31, 2008. While some of this applies to SBS 2008 Standard Edition, the huge value is in the SBS 2008 Premium Edition purchase.
Before I explain why the value is so high, I want to point out that this price saving is over and above the fact that SBS 2008 Premium Edition is itself a “2-Server suite”, whereas SBS 2003 Premium Edition is a single-server suite. SBS 2003 Premium Edition includes not only SQL 2007, it also includes an entire additional Windows 2008 Server license, yes a 2nd server license. And yet, this is not where this huge dollar savings comes from.
There are four different elements to how this savings benefit works:
1. Buy a new copy of SBS 2003 with Software Assurance, you will get the same (standard or premium) version of SBS 2008 when it’s available. (You save $200 on this price advantage alone because SBS 2008 will be a higher priced product than SBS 2003.) You get the entire SBS 2003 Premium Edition bundle and it’s a lower price than after the new product becomes available. Since this price is already lower than the future price will be, anything else below is now essentially “free” stuff, right?
2. Want a 3rd Server license for free? How about a free copy of ISA 2006 and Threat Management Gateway 2010 when it’s released? This is at least a $2500 value for free. The huge value advantage is that Microsoft is providing a “make good” offer to SBS 2003 Premium customers regarding the removal of ISA from the suite in SBS 2008. As a result, your SBS 2003 Premium Edition with SA will provide you with not only a license for ISA 2006, you will also be granted yet another full server license with Windows 2003 R2 Standard Edition. (That’s a 3rd server License.) If you are still looking for more, then keep in mind that you get a copy of Office SharePoint Designer 2007 as well.
3. Another part of the “make good” offer is that any CALs you obtain with Software Assurance for this new purchase also qualify for not only the “per CAL” price savings of $50 per CAL (vs the new 2008 Premium CAL), you also stand to gain the right to use Outlook 2007 licenses being phased out of the next product version. (see above). If you need a total of 15 CALs, you would be buying 10-CALs while saving $50 each on face value is $500, plus potentially you also get 15-licenses for Outlook, a $1500 value itself!
4. Are you a Microsoft “solutions partner” who will provide customer specific installation and configuration? You can quality quite easily to obtain up to an additional $200 rebate on their purchase of SBS 2003 R2 with SA before October 31, 2008.