By Chris Alliegro [bio]
Posted: Sep. 25, 2006

The following an excerpt of a Product Roadmap report published by Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm focused exclusively on Microsoft strategy & technology. More samples of our content, as well as a list of upcoming articles and reports are also available.

Roadmap diagrams summarize major product releases and retirements. Past releases (e.g., SharePoint Portal Server 2003 SP1) are white boxes, while upcoming releases (e.g., SharePoint Server 2007) are gray. The end of Mainstream support for a version (e.g., Content Management Server 2001) is indicated by a black octagon.

Arrows show important dependencies among release events. These appear in the following situations:

• One product version is replaced by a later one; for example, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 SP1 is replaced by SharePoint Server 2007
• One product is subsumed by or incorporated into a later product; for example, Content Management Server 2002 is subsumed by SharePoint Server 2007
• One product supplies components or is a system prerequisite for another; for example, the .NET Framework 2.0 is a prerequisite for Windows SharePoint Services V3.