Guild Companies

The word on the street is that Microsoft has once again rebranded the future "Whistler" release of its Windows 2000 server operating system, and that the program will now be known as Windows .NET Server 2003. With Whistler not expected to be done until very late in the year and not really in the sales channel until early 2003, the name change makes sense.

Windows 2000 was supposed to ship in mid-1999 and catch the end-of-the-year IT spending wave, but wasn't really shipping in volume until around mid-2000 after a February 2000 launch. The name of NT 5.0, which is what Windows 2000 was called internally, included the predictable delay. One of the reasons why Microsoft didn't push for Windows 2000 to be completed prior to the end of 1999 was that IT organizations were chasing millennium bugs as the Y2K transition was approaching and had no desire to buy new servers or operating systems. Somewhat ironically, the poor economies around the world and the consequent IT budget crunches are creating something of a cold environment--a mini-Y2K freeze, as it were--into which Microsoft is not eager to launch a new product. It does not want a chilly reception for Windows .NET Server, which is the cornerstone of its .NET strategy. So launching in a new year with new budgets and new optimism is probably looking like a good idea for Whistler, which was originally supposed to be Windows 2002 and which was originally supposed to debut in October 2001.

Officially, the launch date for the Whistler release of Windows .NET Server has not changed, at least not yet. But Whistler's launch date has already slipped twice, in fact, and a third one would be consistent with past Microsoft scheduling. At the end of March 2001, Microsoft pushed Whistler deliveries out to the first half of 2002. In early March 2002, Microsoft pushed the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) date out to August or September (a date which it beat when it delivered RC1 in late July) and final product delivery to sometime in the second half of 2002. As we said in last week's issue, Microsoft is committed to debut the Whistler editions of the Windows server operating system with the next iteration of its .NET Framework and the "Everett" release of its Visual Studio.NET development tool, but the cagey people at Microsoft have not said when that will be.

You don't have to wait to see Windows .NET Server, however. When we wrote about the Whistler RC1 debut at the end of July, we did not realize that in addition to the RC1 release Microsoft also announced a formal customer preview program kit for this software. The kit provides an English version of Whistler that will expire 360 days after it is installed, and includes the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Windows .NET Enterprise Server 2003 program (akin to Advanced Server with Windows 2000) plus a resource CD that includes links to online documentation for the program. The CPP, which is free, also gives previewers access to a private Microsoft newsgroup dedicated to Whistler. Customers outside North America can get the CPP from their local Microsoft affiliates.