MICROSOFT'S FULL PIPELINE

By M.S.Welles

Microsoft has an aggressive agenda for shipping new software in 2009 and 2010. Four of it's major platforms, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 are all scheduled to ship by the end of 2009. Office 2010 (which includes Sharepoint Server) will ship in early 2010.

Each of these software platforms is capable of providing corporate IT with an upgrade cycle extending past 12 months. Behind this lineup is a new version of SQL Server and an appliance version of the database for parallel processing.

Added to this are a handful of at least 10 code-named projects, also available by late 2009 and early 2010.

All of these planned releases are having a top down effect, forcing IT to stategize and plan much more carefully than in the past. Errors made now will be costly and difficult to overcome.

The result has been a rise in technical consulting jobs, even in a bad economy filled with layoffs.

Microsoft too has gotten on the bandwagon and pulled together very clear planning advice which it is offering to customers. The company has even told customers testing Vista to stop and move on to testing Windows 7.

In the past Microsoft has had a reputation for rarely advising users to abandon one upgrade plan and move on to an impending release of a new version of the product. This appears to be changing as Microsoft takes an honest approach and advises customers to move onto what will be best and in the long run , most economical.