Microsoft launches Windows Server 2008

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"The enhancement we have made to group policies allow companies to be more granular in the way they control and manage data, which is important for business intelligence and how you deploy that to the masses," added Bruce Lynn, director of Microsoft's server business in the UK.

As previously reported by IT PRO, Windows Server 2008 will be available in no less than eight different versions, each with varying levels of feature support.

There will be three main versions - Standard, Enterprise and Datacentre, keeping in line with the outgoing Server 2003 range. All three of these editions will have the Hyper-V (previously codenamed Viridian) virtualisation technology integrated into the operating system, and will cost $999 (£477 - Standard with five client access licences), $3,999 (£1,912 - Enterprise with 25 CALs) and $2,999 (£1,434 - Datacentre, priced per processor) respectively. UK-specific pricing has not yet been announced at the time of writing. There will be three parallel versions of Standard, Enterprise and Datacentre, all without the Hyper-V element, and all costing exactly $28 (£13) less than the versions with Hyper-V.

In addition to the three main releases, there will be a dedicated build of the OS for servers based on Itanium processor technology, costing $2,999 (£1,434) per processor, while a stripped-out web service build, called Windows Server 2008 Web Server, which is basically little more than the IIS web server component, will cost $469 (£224).

Specific details and pricing of SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 are still to be announced. We will update this article as this is announced.

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