Microsoft has unveiled the most significant version yet of its server operating system, but users seeking to deploy its major infrastructure products will be frustrated, as critical elements will not be available for several months.

Currently on offer to volume licence holders, Windows Server 2008 will be fully available in March. SQL Server 2008, which is being road-tested by customers such as motor racing group McLaren, will only be released to manufacturing in the third quarter. Also, the complete Hyper-V virtualisation offering will not arrive for another six months.

The mish-mash of availability will put a brake on short-term deployments for some firms. However, IT Week tests and outside experts suggest Windows Server 2008, in gestation for several years under the “Longhorn” codename, will be worth the wait.

Darren Brown, datacentre leader at services firm Avanade, said the major interest his firm has has been in Windows Server. “Features such as Server Core allow a company to deploy a server that concentrates on what it should be doing rather than having all these other services deployed out of the box,” he argued. “There are big savings to be made in managing your server estate. You can get a 25 per cent reduction in patches and fixes, for example by not installing unneeded drivers.”
The latest Windows Server releases may also provide a much-needed boost to sluggish Windows Vista deployments as some firms will elect to upgrade clients at the same time as servers, and take advantage of new provisioning capabilities in the latter.

In the longer-term, Microsoft’s Hyper-V will be of interest by “aggregating [server loads] and bringing a dynamic approach to the datacentre”, Brown said.
However, the large majority of Microsoft customers are likely to give the new releases plenty of time to bed in.

“In the same way that uptake of Windows Vista has been slow due to a very stable Windows SP SP2, I expect a similar hangover from SQL Server 2005,” said Jamie Thomson, senior technical consultant at UK services firm Conchango.

Despite this, some early adopters are ready to go now. “In motor sport, you take any advantage as soon as it’s usable,” said Peter van Manen, managing director of McLaren Electronic Systems, which plans to use SQL Server 2008 for real-time data streaming to telemetry systems.

At Cambridge University, researchers into how Darwin formulated his theories plan to use new spatial capabilities and large file support features in SQL Server to track and visualise the evolution of the local fauna, which Darwin used as develop his theories.

“If [Darwin’s tutor] Henslow and Darwin had been alive today, they would be database nerds,” said Professor John Parker.