Microsoft Plots Windows Server Roadmap to 2010

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

A few weeks ago, at the WinHEC conference in Seattle, the top brass at Microsoft actually committed to bringing out a "Longhorn" kicker to the current Windows Server 2003 operating system. They danced around about the server roadmap a bit. Last week, Bob Muglia, the senior vice president of the Windows Server Division, was on a press tour and sketched out Microsoft's server roadmap with a bit more detail.

Since the "Whistler" release of Windows, which we know and love as Windows Server 2003, and which united the desktop, workstation, and server operating systems with a single code base, Microsoft has had some problems creating and following a roadmap for its server operating systems. "Blackcomb," the signing, dancing, .NET-enabled release of Windows, was due 12 to 24 months after Windows Server 2003, which was delayed repeatedly and had many different names. On the original roadmaps from four years ago, that would have put Blackcomb at any time from now until this time next year.

Then viruses and worms took over the world at about the same time that Microsoft realized its .NET reach had exceeded its grasp. Microsoft's intentions are good, its insights are solid, and it eventually creates products that fulfill a lot of its ambitions, but it sure is not easy to stick to a timetable. So, all of a sudden, Blackcomb got pushed out until 2006, 2007, or 2008, and an interim release, called "Longhorn," was shoe-horned into the mix with some of the .NET features but not the full .NET integration that Microsoft still clearly wants to deliver. What has delayed this software, perhaps more than anything, is Microsoft's desire to beef up the security of the Windows server products, which means making as few changes as possible and only those changes that are necessary to support new features and functions. It also means a longer testing cycle, because now software has to have fewer bugs and fewer security holes. And these two issues are why we have seen Microsoft jump back and forth between adding .NET functionality to the Windows operating system as a Longhorn release, and then back off, and say that it will not do it and .NET functionality will go into the related server programs, like Exchange Server, SQL Server, and so forth.

A few weeks ago, Muglia's boss, Jim Allchin, group vice president of Windows platforms at Microsoft, said that there definitely would be a Longhorn server release. Allchin said that Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 would include features that would make a Windows machine that is plugged into a network pass security tests before it went live on the network. He added that the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003 would come out at the same time as Windows Server 2003 SP1 for that platform. Allchin said further that, sometime in 2005, Microsoft would provide a further "update" to Windows Server 2003, but he did not call it Windows 2003 SP2 or Windows Server 2005. This is Longhorn, and in addition to the new WinFS file system, Allchin said, it would include a new communications server, based on Web services protocols and code-named "Indigo," and a new graphics subsystem code-named "Avalon."

Muglia was a bit more specific in describing Microsoft's server plans. First, he said that Microsoft wants to get the Windows server platform on a cycle doing a major new release every four years and an update two years after each new release. There could be interim Service Packs, if necessary, but it looks like Microsoft wants to eventually get away from this practice, as well as killing off the introduction of interim Feature Packs, which it often adds for the adjunct server programs in the Windows Server System stack. But Microsoft cannot immediately get on this cycle, and there are some bumps in the road in the meantime.

In late 2004 (September or October is my guess) Microsoft will roll out Service Pack 1 for Windows 2003 as well as Windows Server 2003 for-64-bit Extended Systems, the unwieldy name for the 64-bit version of Windows that supports the Opteron and Xeon-64 processors. Microsoft also will roll out a new feature called the Server Performance Advisor and the Windows Update Services (for more automatically patching Windows programs).

In 2005, Windows Server 2003 Update, code-named "R2" internally at Microsoft, comes out. This is the "update" that Allchin was referring to a few weeks ago. Longhorn Server Beta 1 will also come out in 2005, although exactly when is unclear. In 2006, Longhorn Server Beta 2 will come out, as will Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2003. The real Longhorn Server is not expected until 2007. In early April, when speaking at a Gartner conference in San Diego, Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect, talked vaguely about delivering the Longhorn Client in 2006. So the clients and servers are slightly out of phase, which was the case with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. If Microsoft sticks to its schedule, an update of Longhorn should come out in 2008, with Service Packs as necessary in 2009. I expect that a new release of Windows Server, perhaps called Blackcomb (or not, because that name has so many negative connotations these days), should roll out around 2010 or 2011, depending on how the coding all goes. Microsoft did not bring up the subject of Blackcomb at all in its briefings.