Part of my ramping-up at Microsoft Canada included some broad overviews of the "biggest product launch in Microsoft's history" - that being Launch Wave 2008. Pretty exciting stuff to see from the inside.
What I can reveal (and is already widely-reported elsewhere) is that the launch will revolve around three major products:
- Windows Server 2008 (aka Longhorn)
- Visual Studio 2008
- SQL Server 2008
They will be released in roughly that order, with WS2008 at the end of Feb, VS2k8 in the first half of the year and SQL Server 2008 at the end of the year.
There's been a great deal of thought put into the launch of these products with respect to Microsoft's vision for the continuation and evolution of their platforms. Key words to watch out for include virtualization, security and management. There are a whack of features in the new server OS that I think will go a significant distance toward eroding the misconception in some minds that Linux + LAMP is the only way to go for web delivery.
If you get WS 2008 adopted in your organization, you're really providing a gateway that will help you realize greater scalability and upgrade potentials as you begin to roll out more applications.
For more info check out the launch site for the Heroes Happen Here initiative - there's links for registering for launch events plus a free time-trial download of WS2008, VS2008 and SQL Server 2008.
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