Dawn Of A New Vista (And Office)

Vista and Office 2007 officially launch—whatever that term means now. And it'll be interesting to check out the energy levels at this morning's events at Nasdaq and Marriott. Maybe some of that Rockafeller-Center-tree-lighting charisma will spill over.

A completely non-scientific survey of Microsoft partners indicates--at least to me-- that interest is higher in the new Office 2007 slate of products than in Vista itself. Maybe that's because Office 2007 is simply not as late as Vista and the team hasn't had to pull back on as many promises as the new Windows client. Let us not forget the vaunted Longhorn pillar promises that have been downscaled as client and server O/S development got severed.

Office is hitting its 36- to 48-month release cycle pretty much right on, and that's because the team early on saw that Longhorn was in trouble and as CRN first reported made the call that Office 2007 (then known as Office 12) would run on existing Windows XP and 2000 infrastructure.

Or maybe it's just B.S.

At any rate, as the world watches Steve Ballmer in New York (and Jim Allchin and Jeff Raikes and other execs around the world today) there's interesting news over at another corner at Microsoft. In short, SQL Server continues to strut its stuff.

Computerworld reports that Microsoft SQL Server, at least according to researchers queried, has fewer security gotchas than Oracle's database. Unbreakable? That must depend on your definition.

As CRN reporter Kevin McLaughlin notes here and here there will be doubtless be more, much more, about Oracle database security (or lack thereof) in the news upcoming.

In the meantime, time to get the game face on for the big Vista/Office hullabaloo.