Today, Dell is adding Microsoft’s Small Business Server 2011 Essentials (or simply called SBS 2011 Essentials or SBSe) to its line-up of server solutions. What makes this new solution offering from Dell different from others is that PowerEdge servers pre-installed with SBS 2011 Essentials are positioned to be the ideal first server purchase for your small business customers that are running fewer than 25 PC’s. SBS 2011 Essentials has been designed keeping in mind that small businesses are often not tech experts and don’t generally want to try to adapt to IT solutions that are marketed towards large enterprises.
Some of the most common (but often left unaddressed) pain points of such small businesses can be issues like finding IT and servers too complex, protection of stored business information, and being able to access data from remote locations. Dell addresses these needs by making SBSe easy to install right out of the box, not to mention including neat features like automatic local backup and restore, remote data access, and access to applications like email and collaboration through the cloud.
Small businesses are often too busy to do the research they feel is necessary to make a technology decision. As Becky McCray from smallbizsurvival.com notes, businesses often feel a vendor will only provide them with a biased response. This is where Dell’s embrace of channel partners adds value. Small businesses can turn to their local reseller who knows all the different vendor offerings and can make a technology purchase suggestion based on their third-party knowledge.
There are approximately 27 million small-to-medium business organizations in the world that have one or more PCs, but don’t have a server infrastructure. This vast and untapped market is worth an estimated $93 billion dollars. I highly encourage our partners to consider serving this niche market with Dell’s PowerEdge servers with SBS 2011 Essentials. To view additional SBSe documents, view useful sales and marketing tools and register for the server bonus program, please visit our channel SBS 2011 Essentials Page. For more information on how to become a Dell partner please visit PartnerDirect Portal.
For more information about SBSe, take a look at Ann Roe’s post about the benefits that SBS Essentials 2011 brings to small and medium business customers.
I would love to hear from you about what else you think Dell could do to further help you promote and sell SBS 2011 Essentials. I welcome your comments and questions here, also please feel free to email me.