When Microsoft announced that next version of Windows Server was going to be shipped in 2016. I like many others became frustrated… why would they want to wait so long? dammit I want access to all the cool new feature set that they have done so far.
Now I’ve spoken to alof of IT-pros over the last couple of days, and of course we are a selfish race.. We want the tech now! then it got me thinking. Do we want quick releases or longer release cycles?
Well lets go back a bit. Microsoft is now soon ending support for Windows Server 2003 which is gonna hit a lot of buisnesses hard, since many still have servers running 2003. (according to HP is close to 11 million servers –> http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2014/05/02/windows_server_2003_hp/) It is because they (enterprises) are lazy to mgirate? I mean Microsoft has really made alot of tools available to help them in aiding them in the migration process. But In some cases it is not even possible to do a migration (and yes there are some of them) but it also a complicated process and a long way to go for many enterprises.
We can also see that the majority is using Windows Server 2008 on Azure as well
Why is that ? Isn’t Windows Server 2012 better then 2008 ? Doesn’t it have a better feature set as well as more scaleability ?
After I’ve been thinking for a while I belive the problem is a bit two-fold first of. All enterprises have IT-folks which already have to much to do on a day-to-day basis, an migration process takes a long time and therefore many enterprises are stuck on older platforms for a longer time then they want to. (Hence the numbers of 2008 and 2003 deployments) and my other guess is that Microsoft wants to make vNext are more compelling offer by including more new features into the latest and greatest, like why should I buy a car if it’s only a bit faster then my old one ?
But still, i’m looking forward to Windows Server vNext! Stay tuned for Microsoft Ignite! 