I doubt that most small organizations really care about single sign-on or if their small number of systems “fit together”. Most workgroups are way too small for single sign-on to make any real difference.

If one my employees can’t remember passwords for four applications needed at my company (file server, e-mail, ERP system, private web server) it is surely a sign that I need to upgrade that employee. Most employees have way more personal passwords than work passwords anyway.

In fact, with trends toward use of personal PCs and non-PC devices at/for work and toward use of web and other centrally managed applications I expect that tools like Active Directory which mainly helps in managing the unmanageable Windows client will fade away.

“The VAR Guy thinks SBS’s biggest competition will involve SaaS for small business, rather than some on-premise open source suite.”

Yes, you are right. It’s not only a competition SaaS vs SBS though, I guess that Microsoft is already walking that path: services from the physical office to the cloud (Azure).

So, here my 2 cents:
Everyone seems to be worried about ruling the cloud space (“sky”) showing an offer there, but what about the “sky’s door”?

I mean, in the short and medium term (at least) there will the need for a server that connects the LAN with the cloud. Whoever owns the key of that “sky’s door”, it’s in charge of connecting SMBs with a cloud or another (or with all of them). Currently, the key is SBS and the keeper is Microsoft.

What do you think?

Moreover, have you checked eBox’s features? eBox is able to plug into Active Directory:
http://trac.ebox-platform.com/wiki/Document/Documentation/EBoxActiveDirectorySync

However, you are probably right, we -eBox and other open source projects like eBox- are not “there” yet. We are still trying to disrupt the SMB servers market, but we are on the way up:

“In low-end disruption, the disruptor is focused initially on serving the least profitable customer, who is happy with a good enough product. This type of customer is not willing to pay premium for enhancements in product functionality. Once the disruptor has gained foot hold in this customer segment, it seeks to improve its profit margin. [...]”

Kind regards,
javivazquez
COO at eBox Technologies

Active Directory -> Exchange -> Joining desktops and servers *easily* for single sign-on and other resources -> Programming components and APIs to integrate those components in third-party apps -> Easily installed management tools

They all fit together. Some might say that’s lock-in, and yer it is, but the simple fact is that organisations expect all of these things to fit together pretty easily.

There is no way right now that you could move your Windows servers and desktops to a Linux and open source equivalent in a standardised way with the same level of single sign-on ease and management, certainly where desktops are concerned.

“[...] until some distributor starts thinking about putting a lot of open source components together into a distribution that can compete with Windows Server on functionality, on equal terms with the right management tools, [...]”

There are at least a couple of open source distributions integrating a lot of open source components together with a simple UI to manage all the network services required by SMBs.

You might be interested in taking a look to eBox Platform website and downloading the product:
http://www.ebox-platform.com

Kind regards,
javivazquez
COO at eBox Technologies

Wrong actually, and just because a system is easier to administrate and you don’t have to rifle through a manual (or a totally inadequate and incomplete man page) it doesn’t mean someone doesn’t know what something does. It’s a mental disease and silly perception that pervades the open source world.

“Of course, you do have to read the manual to make this work which is probably beyond your point an click skills. But don’t worry I think unemployment benefits have been extended.”

I wondered whether a comment like this would turn up. Let’s divert attention and question someone’s l33tness by bringing up ‘point-and’click’. Wrong actually. I am a died in the wool Linux guy who’s steeped deep in the command line at the moment getting a bunch of systems running on Amazon’s EC2.

Unfortunately, I recoognise that unless a Linux distributor starts creating a competitor to Windows Server and starts to make headway in all those departments where it rules the roost then it is going nowhere fast. Simple fact of life.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/14/pc_sales_jump/

What does this mean for Microsoft’s struggle to recover its sagging profit margins by pushing customers off cut-price Windows XP onto higher-priced Windows Seven? Probably not a lot of success…

Any distributor who can start doing that, and it might well be one that does’t exist yet, will explode on to the scene in a big way. The licensing simplification alone would have Microsoft in cardiac arrest. You can only get so far with a drop-in Unix replacement and trying to compete with Red Hat doing all the same things they are, and sadly that’s what Canonical are doing. It’s going to be tough for them.

The simple fact of the matter is that the graphical tools are not good enough and neither is the development system that surrounds the desktop and an application like Symphony. You can’t just throw individual software components at people and throw a price-point over it that you expect to be ‘cheaper’.

Put bluntly, the quality of the software versus the Microsoft ‘competition’ is nowhere near being close enough.