* Different work by different Microsoft teams to develop Longhorn functionality
Last issue, I urged you not to worry about supposed ship dates for Longhorn, the next version of Windows due out in a desktop version in 2005 and a server edition approximately 18 months later. Don’t worry about it, but be ready for new functionality to show up in the intervening time.
As announced at the recent worldwide partner conference in New Orleans, Microsoft will parcel out new functionality for both servers and desktops as that is ready to go. If everything goes as planned, Windows Server 2003 will be able to support all of the functionality in the Longhorn desktop versions when they ship in a couple of years.
We’ve talked about this before, but it’s worth repeating that when Microsoft decided earlier this year to “de-couple” workstation and server development they were initially faced with a classic chicken-and-egg problem: should they update the desktop first or the server?
The answer that Redmond gave last spring was that after Windows Server 2003 the next release would be a new desktop operating system and the two would alternate every couple of years after that. In the interim, updates and add-ons for one or the other would be used to provide support for new features. Among the services already released, or planned in the near future, for Windows Server 2003 are Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM), Automated Deployment Services, Windows SharePoint Services, Windows Rights Management Services and Group Policy Management Console.
Some of these services can be used “out of the box” by Windows XP but most require add-ons to the desktop which will all roll up into a fully integrated Longhorn desktop platform. New features in that operating system will require new add-ons for the Server, which then gets rolled up into the server version of Longhorn.
It’s a bit herky-jerky right now (but all signs are that things are going well so far), as the various Microsoft teams try to coordinate at the same time they’re incorporating the new Trustworthy Computing Initiative including the new Microsoft Audit Collection System and the anxiously awaited Security Configuration Wizard. We’ll have a lot more to say about those in the coming weeks.
We should hear more this week during the Professional Developer Conference as Microsoft provides details to the many third party and in-house developers who are in Los Angeles to learn what they’ll have to do to take advantage of the new features, technologies and functionality of Longhorn. Stay tuned but, as I said, there’s nothing to actually “worry” about.
