Hyper-V Beta: More Microsoft Gifting

In one episode of the kids' cartoon "Fairly OddParents," young Timmy Turner wishes that everyday could be Christmas. But the giving gets pretty old pretty fast. Today, Microsoft gave yet another software product, Hyper-V beta, to IT organizations for testing. Will the giving ever stop?

On Tuesday, I griped about Microsoft giving away too many holiday gifts, in the form of software to test or to deploy. Already this week, Microsoft released service packs for Office 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007. Microsoft released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate twice, yesterday for the general public and a week ago for developers. Last week, Microsoft also issued release candidates of Windows XP SP3 RC1 and Windows Server 2008. Exchange Server 2007 SP1 was released about two weeks ago.

As I said before, all this giving is about Windows Server 2008, and Hyper-V is a particularly important component. Microsoft is lining up all its ducks in preparation for the February 27 launch of Windows Server 2008. But Microsoft expects customers to do the quacking.

There is something good in all this giving, and it should warm Microsoft partners' hearts as they sip their eggnog. These releases are all very well coordinated, which is quite the accomplishment. With the 2003 release cycle, Microsoft significantly increased the amount of cross-feature integration among its products, particularly Office, along the stack to server software. Such an approach requires significant coordination. The delay of one product can cause a chain reaction affecting many others. Microsoft definitely had some multiple product delay problems in 2003, 2004 and 2005.

Moving into 2008, Microsoft has gotten much better at its development processes, even with the potential burden of cross-product feature dependencies. The company talks a whole lot about collaboration, and it's more than a sales pitch. Clearly, Microsoft is doing something right with its software development processes; it doesn't hurt that the company's developer ranks have swelled enormously since the 2003 release cycle.

Remember, Microsoft uses its own software for most processes. These coordinated releases might be the best sales testimony yet for SharePoint and the company's other collaboration and business process software. They're all signs that maybe Microsoft will get beyond its legacy of constant delays, which would be good news for Microsoft partners selling and customers purchasing Enterprise Agreements or Software Assurance contracts. By their very character, the contracts demand timely delivery of new versions.

Ho, ho, ho. Maybe the real present isn't Microsoft's Hyper-V gift but what its delivery means, in the context of all this other software, to the company's customers and partners.

[Link to Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V Evaluation Software]

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