SAN FRANCISCO — Will Monday's official launch of SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2005 be one of Microsoft's last big launches?

That's a definite possibility, given the multiple mentions by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during his keynote address here of Microsoft's need to develop and release its products in a more timely fashion.

Leading up to Monday's event, Microsoft had billed the November 7 rollout of SQL Server 2005 "Yukon", Visual Studio 2005 "Whidbey" and BizTalk 2006 as the company's "most important launch of the year." SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk 2006 are the three products at the heart of Microsoft's application platform.

"This is a big, big launch for us, as it should be, given how long it's been since the last release" of these products, Ballmer told the nearly 3,000 launch attendees in San Francisco.

Ballmer also conceded during his remarks that "a more rapid cycle time may be appropriate in the future."

Microsoft technology evangelist and blogger Robert Scoble raised the timeliness issue on his blog this past weekend.

"There's changes afoot inside Microsoft. Bill and Steve have been repeating in the press that Microsoft needs to ship software faster…. See, SQL Server hasn't shipped in several years. Why not? Because they added the .NET Framework deep inside SQL Server. Now, these aren't two small teams that met once over pizza and beer and decided to do this. No, these are two HUGE businesses. It'd be like if GM and Toyota got together and decided to do a new project together with each other's technology."

Scoble said he expected Microsoft to become more agile by reducing the number of dependencies between different products and technologies.

But that wasn't Ballmer's message. In fact, during the main demo at the launch, Microsoft highlighted how not only Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 will be tightly integrated, but also how other Microsoft wares, such as Office 12 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, will be increasingly intertwined with those products. Microsoft also highlighted a deal with SAP, via which SAP will integrate SQL Server 2005 directly into one of its own ERP offerings.

Microsoft released the final SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 code eleven days ago. Since that time, customers and developers have downloaded more than 108,000 copies of those two products, according to company officials. Microsoft released a new interim Community Technology Preview (CTP) build of BizTalk Server 2006 on Monday, and committed to delivering Beta 2 before the end of this year and final BizTalk Server 2006 code in the first half of 2006.

During the Monday launch, Ballmer also emphasized a number of new industry benchmarks designed to highlight the enterprise-readiness of its core application platform, and especially its SQL Server 2005 database.

"Today, we should be able to completely convince you that there is no job too big for SQL Server," Ballmer said.

He also played up the appeal of the integrated Microsoft application platform to hosting vendors, claiming that Microsoft's Windows platform has achieved cost parity with Linux as a hosting platform.

More than 50 hosters, including GoDaddy.com and Affinity, announced Monday that they will build hosted solutions on top of the Visual Studio Web Express platform.

For the time being, at least, Microsoft is providing the infrastructure for hosting and — relying on partners to provide hosted applications, — as opposed to delivering to customers directly Microsoft-hosted versions of its own applications.