Will Microsoft say hasta la Vista to other operating systems with the release of Windows Vista? Yes. Yes, at least according to a prediction of market analysis company Gartner. Gartner produced the forecast that Windows Vista will be the last major release of a Microsoft operating system.

In fact, the prediction is tailor fitted on the Microsoft's plans for future releases of the operating system. Representatives from the Redmond Company, starting with CEO Steve Ballmer and Chairman Bill Gates have revealed - while Windows Vista was still in its development stage - that the five year gap from XP to Vista will be a singular event in the company's history.

But Vista will by no means be the last edition of the Windows operating system. In fact, the upcoming variant of the OS is codenamed Windows Fiji and it's a pit stop toward Windows Vienna.

Gartner's prediction is focused on the monolithic deployments of the Microsoft operating systems. In this regard, Microsoft will reveal incremental updates to the operating system. According to Gartner, Microsoft will gear its process involving the development and release of operating systems toward a modular strategy.

Introducing flexibility in the updating process of the operating system is synonymous with the making Windows Vista the Everest of operating system releases, considering that Vista features in excess of 50 million lines of computer code.

The Windows development organization, headed by Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering, Microsoft will introduce more segmented upgrades to the operating systems. Windows Vista Release candidate 1 is planned for availability by the end of 2007. The next release of the operating system, be it Windows Fiji or Windows Vienna, is planned for 2008.