Interesting article from Paul Thurrott outlining his thoughts on Windows 7 today, specifically with regard to Windows Home Server.
Here’s what we do know. Windows 7 can and should be considered Vista Release 2 (R2). In fact, I think Microsoft should market the business versions of the OS under that very name. Beginning with the release of Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, Microsoft no longer forks its Windows code tree for new releases. So the next versions of Windows client (7), Windows Server (2008 R2), and Windows Home Server (WHS) will all be based from exactly the same code. Microsoft will simply combine the right components to create the Windows version it wants and ship it. It’s a much simpler system than before.
If you follow Paul’s thinking, we may never see a version of Windows Home Server based on Windows Server 2008, and instead, “Vail” (the codename for the next version of Windows Home Server) will leap over that release and synchronise with Windows 7 and Windows 7 Server (or whatever it will be called).
Whilst clearly this hasn’t been discussed publically or confirmed by Microsoft (although I generally trust Paul’s intuition) I think this would make a lot of sense.
Certainly life would be a lot easier for the Windows Home Server team who would be building on top of a “live” codebase and thus benefiting from greater support across the Windows Server organisation for their development goals (given that the Windows Server 2003 code is significantly locked down, all development has to be done on top of that codebase by the WHS team) – indeed, they’d have the opportunity to bake in requirements for WHS v2 now whilst the Windows 7 codebase is in development.
Secondly, if, as rumoured, we see some activity to help Windows Home Server and Windows Media Center work better together, this is likely to be more easily facilitated by the teams working off a common codebase, and who knows what new features are planned for WMC in Windows 7 (and indeed other features across the OS) which may enable easier DRM, media sharing (DLNA compliance, anyone?) and hardware support to make a more integrated solution easier to achieve?
If this did happen, however, the implications are that we wouldn’t see Vail until late 2009/early 2010 at the earliest, and bets are still being taken as to when we’ll see Windows 7 Client and Windows 7 Server released – my guess is we’d be looking at at least a 12 month beta for those releases (Windows Vista was 18 months), although from reading around, the Windows 7 Milestone builds are alleged to be very stable, which may lead to a shorter beta cycle.
So, Paul T is forecasting a Windows 7-based future for Windows Home Server. I can absolutely see the logic in that approach – what’s your view?
