Microsoft: No Yukon, Whidbey Until 2005

In a message sent Wednesday, Fernando Caro, head of SQL Server customer programs at Microsoft, said the decision to delay Yukon and Whidbey until the first half of 2005 was made "to ensure that the products meet the high-quality requirements of our customers."

Microsoft previously had promised to deliver both products this year.

To ensure quality, Microsoft has opted to add a third major beta cycle to Yukon, which will officially be dubbed SQL Server 2005, according to the message to customers and testers. Likewise Whidbey will be Visual Studio 2005.

Tom Rizzo, director of product management for SQL Server, said beta 2 of the database is still due the first half of this year. The rationale for a third beta is to make sure customer feedback is taken into consideration. "Yukon is a big release, there's a lot of things inside it and we want to make sure we've tested our own Siebel systems, our own PeopleSoft systems on it," he noted.

Rizzo said some internal Microsoft systems have run on Yukon since beta 1, since last August or September.

Industry observers say both of the long-awaited products are critical to Microsoft's push into the enterprise and are key steps toward the release of the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. Yukon and Whidbey already have been delayed several times.

Solution providers said they need to assess the impact of the latest slip. The downside of Microsoft's "Integrated Innovation" is that a slip or snafu in one product ripples throughout the lineup.

Microsoft has long-promised that Yukon will incorporate support for its Common Language Runtime (CLR) and sport advanced ETL tools.

This story was updated to include Microsoft comments.

PAULA ROONEY contributed to this story.