Next Windows Server Takes Shape

The next release of Windows Server, code-named Longhorn, is approaching its third public beta, and it appears to be on schedule to ship by the end of 2007. Customers will want to begin evaluating Longhorn now because its features will be interesting to a broader audience than the features in the last version, Windows Server 2003 R2, and might affect how customers deploy other servers and software that rely on the Windows Server infrastructure.

Why Begin Evaluations Now?

Unlike Windows Vista and other Microsoft products that have incorporated major changes or allowed feature additions during the release candidate phase of the development life cycle, the third beta of Longhorn will be feature-complete. While large organizations typically need a long lead time to evaluate application and hardware issues created by a new client OS release, the time needed to evaluate a new server OS can be even longer: not only is application compatibility an issue, but the new and changed server features can also impact the organization’s authentication and authorization, networking, and security infrastructures.