Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft just released the July Community Technology Preview of SQL Server 2008 (codenamed Katmai) and plans a new CTP approximately every 60 days instead of a formal beta testing process:

The company is using the CTP process instead of a more formal beta test cycle for SQL Server 2008. By the schedule, a third CTP is targeted to ship roughly 60 days from now, and that would put a fourth CTP at about the end of the year.

Of course, the ship date is somewhere in 2Q08 despite prominent participation in a goofy launch event next February.

Microsoft’s announcement this week that “Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 will launch together at an event in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 2008″ has led to a dust-up over whether Windows Server 2008 (formerly Longhorn) is late or not. Joe Wilcox says “I told ya so” and that it’s late because the launch isn’t in 2007. Microsoft’s Windows Server Division Weblog responds that there’s no delay since  ”Windows Server 2008 is still scheduled to be released by the end of 2007.” Tom Sanders suggests that Microsoft is in denial.

On the flip side of the coin, Mary Jo Foley reports that despite the big launch in February, SQL Server 2008 (formerly Katmai) won’t be released to manufacturing until 2Q08. That’s in line with Microsoft’s past promises which were suitably vague. The third amigo, Visual Studio 2008 (formerly Orcas) had no promised date and we have no inkling of the date for actual code release.

I don’t know about you, but all of this leaves me feeling a bit grumpy. I don’t much care about the exact definition of “late,” but find the launch event singularly useless since it has minimal connection with the actual availability of product. That’s not a new phenomena, but Microsoft seems to be stretching it quite a bit in order to hold a big hootenanny in February. Everybody likes a party and full employment for the marketing team, but seriously, why bother? Even worse, it makes it appear that Microsoft has no conception of their actual ship dates so they are just arbitrarily declaring a celebration and roping in any product in the vicinity.

Update: S. “Soma” Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division weighs in on Visual Studio 2008 via his weblog:

While we will be launching our products together in February, we are still aiming to release Visual Studio 2008 and .NET FX 3.5 by the end of this year based on your feedback so far.  …  We will start the ball rolling with the release of VS2008 and .NET FX 3.5 beta 2 later this summer, and expect more exciting news, reviews, training and resources following this.

So what’s with the “launch” event?

“The February launch event is more of an opportunity to show customers, partners, and the community the wave of innovation Microsoft is delivering with all three products represented (i.e. Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008).” 

Yep, it’s a marketing hootenanny. Microsoft presumably won’t delay any form of availability of Windows Server 2008 or Visual Studio 2008 just for this.

Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s COO, rallied the faithful today at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference with a variety of announcements. Heading the bill, “Turner announced that Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 will launch together at an event in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 2008.”  (You may know Visual Studio 2008 as “Orcas” and SQL Server 2008 as “Katmai.”) Unsurprisingly, a lot of PR hoopla is planned for partners and in general.

This week Microsoft is holding its TechEd 2007 conference and there’s a variety of news:

Bob Muglia, SVP of Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business kicked off TechED 2007 by detailing the company’s strategy for Dynamic IT for the People-Ready Business (Dynamic IT). Apparently it was as bad as it sounds although there were some redeeming features.

More substantially, Muglia also announced assorted product news including the official names for Katmai and Orcas as well as revealing two acquisitions:

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Microsoft today confirmed the popular suspicion that Katmai, the next version of SQL Server, will ship in 2008. Feature details are currently sparse, but one interesting aspect is that Microsoft is acquiring SoftArtisans Inc.’s OfficeWriter for managed report authoring in Microsoft Office with Katmai. Microsoft’s Russell Christopher suggests that “this is a huge win for folks who want to render reports to Word and/or use the lighter-weight Excel rendering extension SoftArtisans has created.”

Update: Also mentioned was Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 which is scheduled to launch in the second half of 2007.