Partners first heard whispers about Longhorn, the innovative next-generation of Windows with a completely new kernel, way back in 2002 or earlier. It was supposed to be in beta in 2003. Didn't happen. This year, Microsoft finally 'fessed up about its Longhorn travails, and in the process unveiled some significant technical compromises it would make to get the operating system out the door for its official release date of late 2006 (for the client) and late 2007 (for the server).

The compromise in question is the decision to take Longhorn to market sans its most heralded, new feature, WinFS (Windows File System). WinFS is a unified file system that would sport innovative search capabilities that make retrieving an array of desktop system file types much simpler. Apparently, developing WinFS is anything but simple, however, and certainly not easy enough to do by the first release of Longhorn. To soften the blow, Microsoft has promised to deliver two other key Longhorn components, the Web services/communications subsystem Indigo and the graphics subsystem Avalon, in the first iteration of the OS. In addition to that, Indigo and Avalon will also be released as individual components for use on existing Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 machines. The intent is to let developers and integrators at least get started with some elements of the technology, and it's a decision that many partners have applauded.