Microsoft plans product barrage

07.11.2006
Microsoft during the next 12 to 18 months plans a barrage of announcements unequaled during any period in the company's history, a Microsoft official said on Monday evening.

The product rollouts began this week with the , said Microsoft's Ron Markezich, vice president of managed solutions at Microsoft. It proceeds with the upcoming , upgrades to SharePoint and Exchange, and the planned release of the Longhorn version of Windows Server. Also, Microsoft in the first half of 2007 plans to offer a beta version of the upcoming Visual Studio "Orcas" release, said Scott Guthrie, general manager of the Microsoft Developer Division.

"It's the largest launch wave that we've had in the history of the company," Markezich said. Possibly, the launch schedule is the most ambitious in the history of any company around the world, he said.

Markezich and Guthrie addressed the audience at the conferences, which feature a series of simultaneous events spotlighting Microsoft technologies such as Visual Studio and ASP.Net.

Microsoft representatives during Monday evening presentations demonstrated a variety of upcoming technologies, such as the 2007 version of the SharePoint server, which can receive e-mail. Exchange 2007, meanwhile, has a managed folders feature that enables workflow management for e-mail usage.

Markezich touted security gains planned for Vista. "If there's one reason to deploy Vista in the enterprise, it's the security benefits," he said. Coupled with the upcoming Longhorn release, Vista can deploy network access protection.