LOS ANGELES – Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates Tuesday revealed one of the company’s worst-kept secrets by announcing Longhorn Server will officially be called Windows Server 2008.

Gates made the announcement at Microsoft’s 16th annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), but he did not shed any additional light on when the server will ship. He said the date remains “the second half of 2007.”

The date is key because it also will bring the first public beta of Microsoft’s new virtualization technology, Windows Server Virtualization (WSV). Last week, Microsoft announced the revised ship date of the WSV public beta and tied it to Longhorn and that certain features were being eliminated in the first version.

Full story.