During TechEd 2009 in LA this year it was amazing the amount of new products that will come to market in the next six to twelve months. Here’s a short summary of some of the new releases you should expect and plan for:
- Windows 7 – Q4 2009
- Windows Server 2008 R2 – Q4 2009
- Exchange 2010 – By end of year 2009
- Office 2010 – 1H 2010
- Geneva (Federation identity) – End of year 2009
- Kilimanjaro (new SQL server) – 1H 2010
- Gemini (BI for Kilimanjaro) – 1H 2010
- ForeFront Identity Manager 2010 – 1H 2010
- Quebec (compontentized Windows embedded) – 2010
- SharePoint 2010 – 1H 2010
- Dublin (App server extensions to Windows server) – TBD
- Velocity (distributed caching for clusters) – Mid-2009
- Stirling (Forefront client) – Early 2010
- TMG/UAG – 2H 2009
- Madison (massively parallel data warehouse) – August 2009
What was even more surprising and out of character was that Microsoft was telling people to skip Vista and Exchange 2007 if you haven’t started deploying them today. I would go as far as say skip server 2008 and wait for R2, unless you really need some server 2008 features today. Like Windows 7, server 2008 R2 has undergone hundreds of tweaks and changes to make it faster, more secure, and easier to manage. Oh and don’t forget server 2008 R2 is 64-bit ONLY!
