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Last week Microsoft had a faux announcement for Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (for midsize companies) which are now classified as part of the Windows Essential Server Solutions family. Since they run on Windows Server 2008 and in some versions require SQL Server 2008, they won’t be out until later in the year after those products ship and can be integrated.
The current bill of materials is below and you’ll notice that there actually is some new news including Windows Live OneCare for Server (which adds more stretch marks to “Windows Live” branding) and integration with Office Live Small Business.
The marketing elves have been hard at work in Redmond and have come up with the official name for Microsoft’s “Centro” mid-market server bundle: Windows Essential Business Server:
Microsoft’s Kevin Beares unveils the Community Technology Preview (CTP)Program for “Centro,” Microsoft’s mid-market server bundle:
We have released a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Windows Server Code Name “Centro” and the team is looking for program participants to provide confidential feedback.
Follow the link for the requirements and the application procedure.
Day 2 seems to have been Windows Server Day at WinHEC 2007 with Bill Laing, general manager of Microsoft’s Windows Server Division orchestrating the show. While there were some spiffy demos (e.g. hot swap) the only new news seemed to come out in the discussion of the roadmap for Windows Server operating system products ([1],[2]) where it was revealed that Windows Server 2008 R2 would be 64-bit only and that Windows Server 2008 would be the last 32-bit operating system, client or server, that Microsoft would release. Presumably that injunction does not apply to variants of Windows Server 2008 like Home Server which in beta, at least, are 32-bit and of course versions like Centro and Cougar (i.e. Small Business Server) were already scheduled to be 64-bit only because they include Exchange 2007 which is 64-bit only.
Windows Server OS Roadmap
Finally, Mark Russinovich’s interesting keynote description of some of the kernel changes in Windows Server 2008 (e.g. no more specific uniprocessor kernel variants) is summarized by Peter Galli at eWeek.
