Windows 2008 is scheduled to begin shipping in the next few weeks. When it does, business customers and IT staff who are interested in the OS, but who don't have plans to deploy it until its first service pack, are in for a surprise. According to Microsoft, Windows Server 2008 will ship with what the company refers to as SP1 already installed. As a result, the first post-release service pack for WS 2008 will be SP2.
management for Windows Server, Ian McDonald, explained the rationale behind this decision a few days back. According to him, Microsoft has actually been attempting to synchronize its client/server release schedule for most of the past decade. After the Windows ME/Windows 2000 launch, Redmond apparently intended to do a combined release, but opted to fork and launch Windows XP early due to customer pressure. Windows Server 2003 didn't appear until April, 2003, well after the launch of both XP and XP SP1. Microsoft kept both products updated—XP got SP2 in August, 2004, while WS 2003 R2 tipped up in December of 2005—but the two products were never working from the same codebase or on the same release schedule.
After nearly eight years, Microsoft has resolved this particular issue, and the implications are positive. Building Vista and WS 2008 SP1 on the same codebase should make it easier for the company to patch vulnerabilities, port new features from one version of the OS to the other, and generally simplify the entire update process. Microsoft's update service is now advanced enough to distinguish OS-specific fixes; a patch for a media player issue won't end up downloading to a WS 2008 system, and patches for a server system won't end up in a Vista machine.
The only problem with McDonald's explanation comes at the end, where he states: "So, it's [Windows Server 2008] called SP1—in retrospect i should just say its called that so you don't have to wait for SP1 for it to be right like people have before." McDonald appears to be missing the point. Businesses don't wait for a service pack release because the addition of an "SP" suffix imbues an operating system with some sort of magical powers. A service pack represents a comprehensive body of software updates released and approved by Microsoft after the relevant OS has spent a significant amount of time (typically one year or more) in the wild.
In the real world, it doesn't matter if Microsoft releases a new product with SP1 or SP10 attached to its name. In almost every case, businesses have a huge number of reasons not to jump for a new OS—any new OS, for that matter—immediately. IT departments are unwilling to risk the stability and security of their infrastructure for any new product, from Microsoft or anyone else. Implying that a suffix change is sufficient to allay corporate IT concerns is akin to saying that such concerns are needless and silly in the first place. That's not a statement likely to resonate well with security and network administrators.
management for Windows Server, Ian McDonald, explained the rationale behind this decision a few days back. According to him, Microsoft has actually been attempting to synchronize its client/server release schedule for most of the past decade. After the Windows ME/Windows 2000 launch, Redmond apparently intended to do a combined release, but opted to fork and launch Windows XP early due to customer pressure. Windows Server 2003 didn't appear until April, 2003, well after the launch of both XP and XP SP1. Microsoft kept both products updated—XP got SP2 in August, 2004, while WS 2003 R2 tipped up in December of 2005—but the two products were never working from the same codebase or on the same release schedule.
After nearly eight years, Microsoft has resolved this particular issue, and the implications are positive. Building Vista and WS 2008 SP1 on the same codebase should make it easier for the company to patch vulnerabilities, port new features from one version of the OS to the other, and generally simplify the entire update process. Microsoft's update service is now advanced enough to distinguish OS-specific fixes; a patch for a media player issue won't end up downloading to a WS 2008 system, and patches for a server system won't end up in a Vista machine.
The only problem with McDonald's explanation comes at the end, where he states: "So, it's [Windows Server 2008] called SP1—in retrospect i should just say its called that so you don't have to wait for SP1 for it to be right like people have before." McDonald appears to be missing the point. Businesses don't wait for a service pack release because the addition of an "SP" suffix imbues an operating system with some sort of magical powers. A service pack represents a comprehensive body of software updates released and approved by Microsoft after the relevant OS has spent a significant amount of time (typically one year or more) in the wild.
In the real world, it doesn't matter if Microsoft releases a new product with SP1 or SP10 attached to its name. In almost every case, businesses have a huge number of reasons not to jump for a new OS—any new OS, for that matter—immediately. IT departments are unwilling to risk the stability and security of their infrastructure for any new product, from Microsoft or anyone else. Implying that a suffix change is sufficient to allay corporate IT concerns is akin to saying that such concerns are needless and silly in the first place. That's not a statement likely to resonate well with security and network administrators.
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