Yesterday in Denver at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference Kevin Turner announced Windows Server® 2008, Visual Studio® 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 will launch together in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 2008.
In Kevin Turner's own words:
Our company invested over $7 billion this past year. It will go up again this next year. That is more than any other technology company in the world in R&D and innovation. That's $7 billion. We're not slowing down. We're going to continue to take the long-term approach.
When you think about Windows Server and it's been a while since we've had a new release on Windows Server, when you think about the ecosystem that's created through Windows Server it is an unbelievable opportunity for us, great improvements for Web, virtualization and security, three key things in the eyes of our customers. And when you think about SQL, you know what, one of the fastest growing, most profitable businesses in all of Microsoft is our SQL Server business, we're winning share, and earning share from customers, because our stuff works and it's saving people money.
And when you think about the fact that we're right on schedule with another release of that in 2008, securable, reliable and scalable platform for your applications, what an opportunity to monetize that.
And then our Visual Studio 2008, improved language and data features for creating modern software, fewer lines of code, more reusable code; that's what people are looking for in the marketplace.
And your question to me might be when, when will you do this Microsoft? It says announcing; when?
Well, here's when. We're going to do it on February 27, 2008 worldwide. It's the biggest single launch we've got in Microsoft on one day.
Microsoft also stated that the Beta 2 of Visual Studio is on track to release later this summer with a release to manufacturing for both Visual Studio and Windows Server by the end of the year.