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Gates Drops More Longhorn Release Hints

Yahoo! News - Gates Drops More Longhorn Release Hints

Erika Morphy , www.enterprise-windows-it.com
Bill Gates (news - web sites) has tantalized the I.T. industry with another clue as to when it can expect to see Longhorn, the next version of the Windows operating system. Speaking at the Gartner Symposium/ITexpo event in San Diego, California, he told the audience that an updated alpha release will come out this year

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) reportedly plans to release a beta this year as well. As for general availability, Gates said speculation that it will be in 2006 is "valid."

However, he emphasized that "Longhorn is not a date-driven release," as there are several technological "must haves" that could impact the release date.

One subject Gates did not mention is the effect last week's EU antitrust ruling will have on Longhorn. Given the wide latitude the EU left itself in dictating how Microsoft products can be packaged, it generally is assumed that Longhorn could be impacted -- even though, technically, the case was about Microsoft's media player.

Delay, Delay, Delay

"Microsoft is not going to bow to EU," Yankee Group senior analyst Laura DiDio told NewsFactor. "They have too much invested in Longhorn, which has been enhanced with many features ... including Web services and collaboration, and integration between the core OS and other applications, including Office."

Thus, Microsoft's strategy will be to "delay, delay, delay," DiDio predicts. "Microsoft will appeal the EU ruling, a process that can take at least three to four years."

Meanwhile, if it pushes up its release date of Longhorn and gets out a pilot this year, the EU ruling ultimately will be moot, DiDio notes. "Once the appeals processes has been exhausted, and assuming Microsoft is still held liable, Longhorn will have been in the market -- and it will, in fact, probably be time for another release."

This, of course, happened in the United States after various rulings against Microsoft. The EU is a little different though; its regulator agencies have greater enforcement powers than its counterparts in the United States, making it more difficult for Microsoft to run out the clock.

A Little Clarity, Please

At this point, though, it is still a guessing game. For starters, much of what the industry knows about Longhorn is mere speculation, Gartner analyst Michael Silver told NewsFactor, based on slideware, which is always subject to change.

For example, when the concepts of Yukon and Longhorn first emerged, Longhorn was tightly linked to Yukon, Gartner research analyst Betsy Burton told NewsFactor. "The early vision was that Yukon would be the storage mechanism for Longhorn. Now, Microsoft is positioning Longhorn as an OS that uses Yukon's technology. That is a fairly vague comment, obviously."

March 30, 2004 at 10:24 PM in Microsoft | Permalink | TrackBack (8) | Top of page | Blog Home