From the eBox Plaform blog, some ideas about eBox's position in the market, disruptive technologies. Linux and other Open Source tools equal or surpass those of the market leader. 

However, in spite of these conditions, open source solutions have a very low presence in the market of SMB servers. The reason is simple: for a server solution to enter the SMBs, it needs all its components to be tightly integrated and be easy to administrate. SMBs do not have resources nor time to deploy complex high-performance solutions, so highly integrated products such as WsSBS cover pretty well SMBs’ technological needs.

This is where solutions such as eBox Platform, developed after the integration of standard open source components, have the required disruptive potential to change the market balance. On the other hand, as the software integrating these components is also open source, there are additional advantages, both in development costs (users community greatly helps reducing the effort needed for design, development and testing) and in sales and promotion costs (due to the word-of-mouth effect generated by the community and the option to try the product without previously paying for it). Thanks to this, it is possible to compete with the market leader with a lower cost structure, turning thus the market of lower-end customers profitable.

Also looks at what eBox needs to do to disrupt the market.

Finally, as it is not possible to use a traditional license-based business model, there is need to be innovative in the value proposition and bring it closer to customer’s needs. For us the solution came in the form of SaaS model (access to the eBox Control Center, offered mainly for VARs and MSPs) and subscription services (disaster recovery, cheap VoIP calls, security audits, reports and alerts, etc), which are not offered by the market leader.

And 

In summary, the key points to disrupt the market of SMB servers are:

• Focus the product initially in the lower-end of the market, to later improve in functionality and start growing in the market stack
• Center the innovation effort in improving system integration and task automation, as well as usability and easiness of administration
• Use open source methodologies for development, distribution and commercialization of the product, generating a user community around the project
• Develop the value proposition in technologies and services that allow for a better convenience of use, such as SaaS or subscription to remote services