Thinking of moving to WSE? Well….

Don’t.

Okay, that might look like the shortest piece of advice you will have for a while so here’s a slightly expanded set of reasons for you.

First off, we’re not suggesting Windows Server Foundation or Essentials is bad – far from it. Microsoft WSF and WSE are logical progressions from SBS from a company that has seen the cloud and fallen in love with it. So to that end if you decide to migrate to WSF/WSE then you will certainly be receiving some nice goodies; hosted Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, and Azure for storage, along with integration with Office 365. And these do cost money – which you might not have budgeted for.

But the main issue really is that you don’t get an option to host Exchange yourself – and that is a little restrictive in our view. WAN connectivity in the UK remains average to appalling when compared to many of our European counterparts and certainly not every business has fibre to the door or even a decent telephone exchange nearby. So for Microsoft to push a rather inflexible feature on small businesses is a tad unfair, particularly when a lot of businesses still have no access to decent broadband.

On the other side of this coin, going to a hosted email environment can sound like a major jump but, if done properly then it can be immensely rewarding too. Just imagine: less time worrying about your email server, having to investigate missing messages or running backups and all the other pains that can come with it. Instead, just give it to a provider such as BizLive and get on with more important stuff.

Elsewhere in WSF/WSE there are some lovely feature improvements that will help you save time and head scratching. Straight out the box you get really simple tools to help manage users, backing up computers or data, and setting up remote access is effortless. An almost killer punch is the licencing; unlike Windows Server 2012 you don’t need CALs to allow clients to access the server – so you do save a fair bit of money there.

But is that enough for us to eagerly recommend you pack your Small Business Server’s bags and kick it out the door? In our view, not really just yet. Instead, you would be much better served taking a step back and drawing up a proper migration plan, which will take into account the changes to your network, how it should be implemented, and very importantly what the migration might cost to your business.

If this sounds like a lot of hard work then don’t worry – we can help you get your head round it all very easily and logically. Just get in touch at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we’ll have a chat first before you make any decisions.