IT Forum 2004: Microsoft commits to a Common Engineering Roadmap

 

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By Alun Williams, Copenhagen

Posted on 18 Nov 2004 at 10:00

It has not received too much attention at the IT Forum - the Windows Server group joked that Bill Gates was feeling the effects of jetlag for that part of his keynote - but Microsoft has changed the way it will present (and commit itself to) its roadmap for future Windows Server products.

The Forum has seen the official launch of a Common Engineering Roadmap, from which the Common Engineering Criteria Report will be produced once a year (in the spring, ahead of the US TechEd conference).

The report is not intended to specify particular feature sets for products, but rather wider environmental criteria, for example whether 64-bit versions will be available, whether a MOM pack for the product will be provided, and whether there will be hot patch technology support, scripting support for operations, etc.

The products covered so far comprise: Virtual Server 2005, Live Communications Server 2005, SQL Server 2005 (beta), and MOM 2005.

You can find the first Common Engineering Criteria Report and the conditions it specifies on the Windows Server website. A Windows Server white paper also goes into why Microsoft created the new roadmap.

'It is setting a bar for industry transparency,' claimed Ilya Bukshteyn, a director of the Windows Server System group, who admitted the company would have to be committed to any declarations in the public document. It will look up to two years ahead, and he agreed that it would now be a major embarrassment for the company to have to contradict its own Engineering Report.