Senior vice president of Microsoft’s Windows platforms group Will Poole said this week the company plans a couple of Longhorn beta releases in 2004 with final delivery in 2005.

Poole, speaking at Microsoft’s annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in New Orleans, ruled-out the prospect of an interim client operating system prior to Longhorn, the subject of some speculation.

The weight of all the people in the Windows client division and across the platform’s division… is around Longhorn. Microsoft does plan follow-up releases of its XP Media Center Edition and Tablet PC Edition before Longhorn, he said.

The ever-shifting Blackcomb, Microsoft’s next planned server operating system, meanwhile, is now being described by at least one company executive as a list of future technology areas.

The vice president of Microsoft’s Windows Server product group David Thompson told WinHEC delegates these technology areas would not be released in three or four years.

Thompson called Windows Server 2003, launched last month, a base from which technologies will be added. Microsoft plans an I-SCSI initiator for virtualization of storage across the IP infrastructure in June, and a third version of network attached storage (NAS) before the end of the second quarter.

As previously reported, Small Business Server, based on Windows Server 2003, is due this summer while 64-bit AMD support will be added with Windows Server 2003’s first services pack.

Automated Deployment Services (ADS) are also planned, enabling administrators to roll out images and affect switching control over racks of serves.

A next-level of integration tools are planned for 2004 and 2005, Thompson said, which can describe an application, describe the hardware that the application needs to run on and permits validation for a match between the hardware and software. This will enable deployment with basic resource management, Thompson said.

Microsoft’s last step in this roadmap will be taken in 2006 and 2007. The company will support full automation development by third parties, development of applications with tools that can capture all operational policies, and the ability to update operational policies back to Windows control services.

Source: Computerwire