Microsoft has told firms to wait until next month for clarification of its roadmap for Windows, after the latest delays to the next release left firms unable to plan for the future. Earlier this month Microsoft said it could no longer give a target date for Longhorn, the delayed successor to Windows 2000 that was initially due to ship this year. It [Longhorn] now seems unlikely to arrive before 2006.
"We"re working closely with our software developer and hardware partners now and will have much more to tell you at the Professional Developers Conference in late October," said Greg Sullivan, lead product manager for Windows. Microsoft continues to recommend that firms deploy Windows 2000 even though mainstream support will end in March 2005, when the product enters the Extended Support phase of Microsoft"s product lifecycle. This means that firms will have to buy additional support, which may be charged on an hourly basis, according to Microsoft.
The software giant is sending mixed messages to firms eager to standardise their desktops and to plan upgrades. "Customers deploying Windows 2000 Professional should continue these rollouts," said Sullivan. However, he added that Windows XP Professional was designed to co-exist with Windows 2000 Professional in enterprise environments, so firms relying on Windows 2000 "may want to include Windows XP". Juliet Andrew of IT consultancy Conchango said, "We are getting our clients to go for XP because it"s better to go with something that has a [longer] lifetime when updating infrastructure. We do not feel there is any benefit in going with 2000 now, as it has the same functionality as XP."