Microsoft Drops WinFS From Vista, Delays Business Version of Office

by , 3:20 PM EDT, June 29th, 2006

Microsoft has cancelled plans to include its WinFS file system in Windows Vista, which is expected to hit store shelves early next year, and has delayed the release of the business version of Office 2007. Bloomberg News referred to a blog entry from company executive Quentin Clark, who said that "some of the WinFS technology will be rolled into the next version of Microsoft's SQL database server, code-named Katmai," according to the article.

The article also quoted Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox as saying: "This was the major feature of Windows Vista. It was part of the operating system and it was an opportunity for developers. Spreading it out into other things that might appear someday is not the same thing."

Bloomberg also covered the Office 2007 for business delay, noting that vice-president Antoine Leblond said in an interview that it "will now be unveiled sometime before the end of the year," rather than October. The retail version of the software was already delayed to January, so that it could be released around the same time as Windows Vista.

Mr. Leblond said that the company is using feedback from Office 2007's 2.5 million Beta testers "to take extra time to fix some of the top features that aren't running as quickly as they should, instead of trying to drive relentlessly towards a specific date."

Directions on Microsoft analyst Greg DeMichillie said: "This is another black eye around scheduling and Microsoft. This potentially means another quarter of slow growth for Office.''