At its partner conference in Denver, Microsoft unveiled the launch dates of their most anticipated products: Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. All 3 products will be released on February 27, 2008 on an official launch party in Los Angeles.
It was expected that at least Windows Server 2008 would be released this year, since Microsoft is hosting their websites currently already on the new platform. This prediction is thus not true, however, just as with Windows Vista, it's expected that Microsoft will release an RTM version as early as November via MSDN and Technet.
Visual Studio 2008, currently still in Beta 1, will soon be brought to beta 2 status, probably in about 3 weeks from now, as rumour has it in the Microsoft hallways ;-) .
SQL Server is currently available as a CTP.
Microsoft wants to present the combination of this 3 products as the premium platform for developing webapplications and services.
On a sidenote, Microsoft will release Vista SP1 as a beta around July 16th, with the final release coming mid November.
Now, that's a lot of joyous news on the release front, isn't it?