The New Operating System is in ‘Escrow’, a Final Stage Before its Release
Microsoft is going to release its “Windows Server 2008” in the month of February. An official announcement was made on January 18 ending all speculations.

Microsoft was a little hesitating with declaring the exact timing for this release of its new operating system until now and it was only said that this new release will hit the market sometime during the first quarter of this year.

While giving a precise time, Microsoft said that the new release will be introduced on or before the February 27. Microsoft would be launching this product in Los Angeles where it be hosting a celebration for” nearly concurrent releases of “Visual Studio 2008”, that it brought out in the month of November last year. The event will also highlight the launch of “SQL Server 2008”, which the company intends to launch sometime during the second quarter of this year. Microsoft has begun using the tagline “heroes happen here” for the launch.

With this new introduction, Microsoft hopes that the “Windows Server 2008” will connect the concept of ‘virtualization’ directly with its server operating system. This will happen for the first time in the history of Microsoft. Virtualization will be in the form of ‘Hyper-V hypervisor’ and it will take some more time, possible six more months from the release of ‘Windows Server 2008’, to take a real shape.

“Windows Server 2008” has several other new features including the ‘Server Core’, a slimmed down installation option that facilitates the businesses install only those features they need to run the server in a specific role. It also has command-line scripting with ‘PowerShell’. This would be an all new version of the” .Net Framework”, “ a re-vamped Internet Information Services, and Network Access Protection”, says Microsoft.

“Windows Server 2008” operating system is presently in the “escrow” mode. It is a phase which involves stages for passing the final testing’s performed on the operating system. There might some more changes introduced immediately after this phase. During these phases of testing recently Microsoft’s internal IT department could spot out a memory bug related to printing. Jim Dubois, GM of Microsoft IT, named it “show stopper”. “That one’s getting fixed, while other minor bugs might not be just yet”, he says.

Bill Laing, General Manager of Windows Server Development, says that the “ Windows Server 2008” will enter” its final stage before release” within a few week’s times only. Microsoft calls this stage in an informal way as “break glass in case of emergency”. This is the stage that is just a week or two away from its launch and “changes are almost unthinkable” says Bill Laing.