Windows

Three product lines from the Windows and Windows Live Division are of primary interest to enterprise customers: the Windows client OS, which includes Windows 7; the Windows Server OS, which includes Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows HPC Server 2008 R2; and Internet Explorer. Customers need to track the status of these Windows products in order to plan for the deployment and maintenance of both desktops and servers and the deployment of other server products, such as SQL Server and Exchange, which have dependencies on specific Windows versions and service packs.

Windows Client OS

The Windows client is Microsoft’s primary OS for desktop, laptop, netbook, and tablet computers (collectively, clients). Steve Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division, demonstrated a “re-imagined” Windows client OS at Microsoft’s Build conference in Sept. 2011. The Windows 8 Developer Preview provided to developers at the conference and via download from Microsoft will likely change substantially before release, but developers can use it to begin creating and testing applications for the final release of Windows 8, probably in late 2012 or early 2013.