At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2007 in Los Angeles, Windows Server codename Longhorn became Windows Server 2008, courtesy of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. At that time, the Redmond company was offering the first public milestone of the product, and the free download is still live. At the beginning of this week, David Lowe, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Windows Server Division, revealed that Windows Sever 2003 Beta 3 had surpassed the 250,000 downloads mark, and that the server operating system was still going strong.

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2007 in Denver, Kevin Turner, Chief Operating Officer, Microsoft, gave the audience and the world an insight into the company's plans for the final availability of Windows Server 2008. Turner pointed to a single international launch even for Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 on February 28, 2008. In this manner, Microsoft confirmed speculation that its last 32-bit server operating system would slip into the upcoming year, although initially the company stressed otherwise.

One such example is represented by the efforts Microsoft poured into emphasizing the fact that the code of Windows Server 2008 will go gold in 2007. And in this respect nothing much changed. Windows Server 2008 will be released to manufacturing by the end of this year, although Microsoft failed to confirm the actual date. However, the point of RTM for Windows Server 2008 is drawing near. There is of course no official confirmation from the Redmond company, but Windows Server 2008 RTM could be just around the corner.

While announcing that Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 has exceeded 250,00 downloads, and that the DFS Namespaces team will be "adding support for domain-based namespaces that exceed the previous size recommendation of 5,000 folders," Lowe also hinted that the next release will be synonymous with the code going gold. "Stay tuned for more feature update news as we get ready for our next big milestone release," Lowe stated.

In an unrelated report, Karin Meier Samples PM, Windows SDK Team revealed that are "both Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 screaming towards RTM!" Now, putting two and two together, you can almost smell the RTM version of Windows Server 2008, and with it, perhaps the first public download of Windows Vista SP1 Beta. Microsoft did confirm that Vista SP 1 beta will drop before early November 2007. This means that Windows Server 2008 could be released to manufacturing in the next couple of months.