Migration Expert Zone

Break out your planning calendars.  Our friends at Redmond Channel Partner magazine recently published The 2012 Microsoft Product Roadmap, which is absolutely worth a look from anyone who is responsible for the deployment and support of Microsoft products in an enterprise.

Windows 8 has been receiving much press attention thanks to a variety of interesting new features, including its “Metro” interface. While a developer’s preview kit has actually been available for some time, Microsoft now plans to release the beta version in February 2012, with general release anticipated in 2013. Windows 8 is touted as a “re-imagining” of the Windows environment.  For a preview of what this means, take a Windows Phone 7 for a test drive.

Available within the same time frame will be Windows Server 8 which, as one would suspect, includes strong hooks to the cloud along with some cost-saving storage and management features.  Yes, Redmond seems to be changing the version numbering scheme again.

System Center 12 is scheduled to be released within the next few weeks or months, with SQL Server 2012 not far behind. We reported recently on the new virtualization management features available in System Center Virtual Machine Manager.  There will also be support for other hypervisors, as well as other platform mobile devices in the new System Center.

Internet Explorer 10, to be released sometime late this year or early next, will be touch-enabled on Windows 8, but watch for announcements regarding browser plug-ins on the new Metro interface.

There are also many rumors swirling around the next version of Microsoft Office, currently called “Wave 15.”  Anticipated for release late this year, we’ve heard that a beta version may be available very soon.  The most popular rumor seems to be that Office 15 will be optimized for the Metro user interface.

Scheduled to arrive along with Office 15 is Exchange 15.  The interesting news is that both the on-premises and online versions of the popular e-mail platform will be developed together, assuring commonality of code-base and, hopefully, consistency of function.

Visual Studio 11 will include the coding version of deduplication software, templates for Metro, and closer integration with Team Foundation Server (TFS).  While no date has been estimated for release, anticipate support for Windows 8 and HTML 5, as well.

Xbox fans should be looking forward to the release, next month, of Kinect support for Windows.  Early television commercials have already previewed some of the more fantastic applications of the fastest-selling consumer electronics technology of all time.

Windows Phone 7 is also slated for some much-needed upgrades, both in the low-end-device market (code-named “Tango”) and the high-end-device market (“Apollo”).  Expect them to appear before the next holiday sales season.

Of course, Microsoft continues to focus on the cloud, and it will release several Dynamics ERP Online versions as well as updates to Office 365 and both flavors of Azure.

Now, these are just educated predictions, and they’re likely to change as we move through the year. What is certain is that we will all be very busy next holiday season, either planning or deploying our next set of upgrades.