While Tech Ed 2008 contains a lot of information about current and coming products from Microsoft, two products that are currently available as a public beta are absolutely nowhere to be found.

Small Business Server 2008 that debuted as a public beta on May 29

Windows Essential Business Server aka Centro during its beta is even available since May 13th

Both products consist  of a suite of applications of which three are already officially released like:

The following products that are part of the suite are still in beta and are planned to be released before the end of 2008:

Small Business Server 2008 only gets a single session at the conference. Both suites are nowhere to be found in the exhibition area or hands-on-labs.

I asked a few people on the conference about the absence of both product suites, but nobody had a better answer than that the suites may not address the needs for the audience at Tech Ed.  This may be true for SBS 2008, but not for Windows Essential Business Server that is aimed at midsize companies up to 500 users on four physical systems. I can say from my experience that WEBS is actually an attractive offer when looking at its licensing costs compared to the full blown licenses for all separate products.

My guess is that some people at the marketing department of Microsoft have been sleeping.

Note:

There is a session about Windows Essential Business Server planned on : 6/12/2008 10:15AM-11:30AM in room S310 C. I still think this is very little information about a major upcoming product on such a large IT Pro event.