When Microsoft unveiled the long-awaited details of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on Wednesday, the company also quietly pushed back the release date for another highly anticipated product, Windows Server 2008.
Just as Windows Server 2003 made significant improvements to Active Directory, Longhorn promises to follow suit. When AD was first deployed under Windows 2000, managing a Windows domain became much easier. With Server 2003, Microsoft kicked it up a notch, adding such functionality as group editing, simpler object editing and a more fluid management interface.
New technologies will now also be released for Windows XP
American antitrust enforcers have started to track Microsoft's development work on Longhorn, the successor to Windows XP, in a move to ensure that the vendor won't violate the final judgment in the government's antitrust case.
If Windows XP seemed daring to conservative IT managers, Microsoft’s next upcoming desktop .Net operating system, code-named Longhorn, should have them quaking in their corporate boots.