Microsoft Senior Vice President Paul Flessner sent the following letter out to testers today detailing product details and release dates of SQL Server 2005, BizTalk Server 2006, and Visual Studio 2005.

"It is official - the countdown to launch has begun! During my Tech.Ed keynote this morning, I announced that SQL Server(TM) 2005, Visual Studio® 2005 and BizTalk® Server 2006 will launch the week of November 7. This will be the biggest launch ever for these products, and we're very excited to deliver them to you. Some of you might be surprised to see that BizTalk Server 2006 has been added to the list of products that will make their debut in November, but from an integrated experience perspective this is an important addition. Many customers already benefit from the integrated development environment of BizTalk Server built on Visual Studio to quickly integrate and automate business processes that span applications, systems and trading partners. By integrating Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006, we hope to change the way you think about and use application infrastructure with your connected systems..."