Windows Server 2008 Available to the Masses

By Nathan Statz

November 7, 2007: While most of Microsoft’s usual swarm of testing cronies have been playing with it for months, the public beta release of Server 2008 has been made available for evaluation.

The official release date of Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 operating system is still holding firm for February 2009 but the final beta has been publicly released for a free 30 day evaluation and can be found here.

Server 2008 marks the first time in five years that Microsoft’s server platform has undergone an upgrade, with Server 2003 and even older versions of the NT based system still being quite common. Whether or not there will be a rapid migration to the new version remains to be seen, particularly considering the failure of Vista to live up to the hype in the consumer operating system market.

Virtualisation is also playing a key theme in Server 2008’s marketing drive as the popularity of the technology is growing strongly. Windows Server virtualisation doesn’t seem to be worrying competitors like EMC subsidiary VMware, who believe Microsoft is coming to the game late with its 1.0 product when its own ESX is well beyond that.

“It’s good we have competitors in the marketplace, but what you need to understand is that we aren’t dealing with the same thing here. What’s coming out from that entity is basically ESX 1.0, it validates that virtualisation is the right thing, but what customers want is proven management capabilities” said Andre Kemp, product marketing manager, VMware in a recent interview with IDM

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