Windows Server Longhorn Beta 1 Released

Hey everybody,

As you probably heard by now, today we released the Beta 1 of Windows Vista, which is the next version of the Windows client operating system, previously known as Windows Longhorn.  What you may not know is that we also released Beta 1 of Windows Server Longhorn. We’re pretty excited about this release, and I wanted to clarify a few things in case it wasn’t obvious in some of the news coverage.

First off, the name change to Windows Vista only applies to the Windows client operating system.  We haven’t changed the name of Windows Server to Vista. Instead, we’ll be following the same naming convention as previous server releases. We haven’t announced the name of the version yet, but you can expect to be something like “Windows Server 200X”. While we are targeting 2007 for release, this will be a quality driven release rather than a date driven release. Once we get customer feedback from the different beta releases, we’ll get a better idea of when we will release.

Second, you won’t find Beta 1 of Windows Server Longhorn in the usual beta spots like MSDN or TechNet.  The goal of Beta 1 is to gather feedback on the platform itself rather than the features, so the recipients of the beta will be OEMs, IHVs, System Builders, ISVs and developers. They will be testing the APIs and the core Longhorn foundation to make sure their applications and hardware work with Longhorn Server.  When we get to Beta 2, you can expect to see more features being added to the OS, as well as a broader beta program. If you want to get a first look at what the Longhorn foundation will be like, go ahead and try the Windows Vista beta 1 since the core OS is the same.

So that is it for now. Stay tuned for more information to come.

Julius Sinkevicius