the exclamake! blog

I’m disappointed in Microsoft here. Beginning last week (September 5th) I’ve been trying to order a Small Business Server (SBS) Standard license but am unable. It seems that Microsoft has introduced R2 (again) but does not have the media kits available. In addition to that, they’ve discontinued SBS Standard 2003 (R1) SKUs so that nothing is available in an SBS flavor. This is particularly a bad mistake since Microsoft always has one version back available to satisfy downgrade rights.

Even as of today, Microsoft reps have no ETA. I’ve been googling and checking the blogs for information similar to this, but still haven’t seen any, so it comes to me I guess!  Hopefully they’ll be able to ship something very soon.  Hard to keep busy when there’s no Microsoft software to install!

Update: As of 9/15, SBS Standard and Premium R2 licenses can be ordered, but media kits for Standard are sporadically being backordered and Premium media kits are definitely backordered.  So, Microsoft’s now taking my money… I guess that’s progress.