Microsofts Muglia Talks Longhorn, Novell and Java - ' 3 ' (
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When are you going to announce what the official name for Windows Server "Longhorn" is, and is it going to be Vista Server, which is what some people inside Microsoft are calling it on their blogs?
No. "Longhorn" is not going to be renamed Vista Server. We will announce the official name when we release Beta 3, which is on track for the first half of 2007.
Can you give me an updated road map for Longhorn, including the upcoming milestones?
Sure. Just before we shipped Vista, we forked the code and the Longhorn Server tree is now our primary tree as we move forward. Itll hold as the primary tree until sometime close to [when] Longhorn ships, at which time the future primary source code tree will merge off and become the next release of Windows client and server. Since we forked from Vista we have pulled up all of the last-minute Vista fixes—those were pulled up within a day or two—and we have now integrated in a final set of changes for Longhorn.
There will be two waves of integration going forward: We have done the first one and will get a CTP (Community Technology Preview) out later this year while, at the same time and in a separate build, we will incorporate the final set of changes and then stabilize the builds into a CTP for the first quarter of next year. We will then do ongoing CTPs as we get closer to Beta 3. The system has been pretty stable through all of this. I was a little nervous that the last set of changes, which werent that massive, would destabilize things, but it actually looks pretty good.
Click here to read eWEEK Labs review of Longhorn Server.
We know that Beta 2 was quite stable and many customers are running it in production right now, but we will probably not encourage a lot of new customers to go into production with the new stuff until Beta 3, or just before. So all the features will be done and everything will be in the code by early next year and then we will concentrate on pure stabilization and customer testing, stress testing and long-running tests, and all the stuff we do to make sure that when Longhorn ships it will be more stable than the current release of Windows Server 2003.
Is the plan to have Longhorn Server and Windows Vista SP1 (Service Pack 1) ship at the same time next year?
Thats the plan, to ship Longhorn and Vista SP1 simultaneously as its one source code base. So, if you follow that model, you have to ship them both at roughly the same time. This time we had more integration to do post-Vista ship than we had hoped we would have, but well see how this plays out next time.
What are your expectations for Longhorn Server adoption?
What will happen is that once it has shipped it will simply be the server of choice for people to deploy. It will sit right next to their 2003 and 2000 servers and is not disruptive. It has new capabilities if you want to take advantage of them for applications, but people will keep their 2003 servers. The server marketplace is not a substantive upgrade one. We do get some upgrades and so we do enable the scenario, but by and large people deploy the new operating system when they buy new hardware and the thing about Longhorn Server is that it will be very straightforward for customers.
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