Microsoft plans on releasing Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server
2008 R2 in July, according to reports from the company’s TechEd 2010 conference
in New Orleans, which kicked off
July 7. The conference, which runs through June 10, focuses on both developers
and enterprise users, and features speeches from Microsoft executives such as
Bob Muglia, president of the Server and Tools business.
In the case of Windows 7, the updates in SP1 will not be major, something
anticipated by the company’s previous announcements in March. In an official
blog post accompanying the announcement, Microsoft pushed businesses to adopt
the operating system sooner rather than later.
“For Windows 7, SP1 will simply be the combination of updates already
available through Windows Update and additional hotfixes based on feedback by
our customers and partners,” Gavriella Schuster, a general manager for Windows
PMG at Microsoft, wrote in a June 7 posting on the Windows
for Your Business Blog. “In other words, customers can feel confident about
deploying Windows 7 now.”
That could be a reflection on business spending for Windows 7, which has
remained relatively anemic despite the operating system’s record sales of more
than 90 million licenses. A number of enterprises and SMBs (small to midsize
businesses) have kept their IT budgets tightened in the wake of the global
recession; Microsoft executives noted during a recent earnings call that
spending on business-related software had only started to revive after months
of flatlining.
Windows
Server 2008 R2’s Service Pack will likewise include only a few updates,
with Schuster noting, “While the new features for Windows Server 2008 R2
benefit Windows 7 by providing a richer VDI [virtual desktop infrastructure]
experience, SP1 will not contain any new features that are specific to Windows
7 itself.” The two new features for Windows Server 2008 R2 include Microsoft
Remote FX, “designed to introduce a new set of end-user experience enhancements
to remote desktop computing,” and Dynamic Memory, which will enable Windows
Server Hyper-V to allocate memory to virtual machines as needed.
Microsoft also announced tweaks to Windows Azure and SQL Azure, including an
updated Windows Azure Software Development kit with support for both Visual
Studio 2010 IntelliTrace and .NET Framework
4.
Microsoft already announced, in April, that it would offer a beta of its
Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) for North American download in June,
with an emphasis on changes to the user interface, integrated archiving and
other areas.
“SP1 will include fixes and tweaks in areas you’ve helped us identify,
including a roll-up of the roll-ups we’ve released to date,” team member
Michael Atalla wrote in an
April 7 posting on the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog. “I also wanted to flag
some of the feature enhancements we’re excited to bring you with SP1, including
archiving and discovery enhancements, Outlook Web App [OWA] … improvements,
mobile user and management improvements, and some highly sought-after
additional UI for management tasks.”
Expect this year’s TechEd conference to be the source of similar
tweaks-and-updates announcements.
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