'R2' Due in October 2005? What about Cougar?

Mary Jo Foley, the true insider and watch of Microsoft reports today about Microsoft letting it be known that R2 of Windows 2003 Server will be targeted for a release date of October 2005. She also mentions rightly so that it will probably slip until at least December.

So what does that mean for SBS "Cougar"? Well obviously as I posted about here that originally Cougar was slated for release in Q3. Well I would wipe that date and put it back to Q1 of 2006.

There's no question that Cougar is on the back burner with Service Pack 1 for SBS 2003 not having been released as of yet. We received word last night from our Partner Tech Specialist at Microsoft that SP1 for Windows 2003 is slated for a March 31, 2005 release so that will probably push SBS SP1 back to perhaps May of 2005. It would be a very aggressive schedule to get a brand new release of SBS out the door in only about 6 months so let's be a little pessimistic here and figure on at least Q1 of 2006 for Cougar. As with all Microsoft products, it'll come when it comes and we'll just have to live with it. Although I gotta say it's hard to have patience for SP1 of SBS since it's including ISA 2004 and all the other patches that we manually do right now. It sure would be nice of Microsoft to release a Service Pack at least one year following the initial release of the product. We going on what 13 or 14 mos of SBS without a Service Pack. I would say that I personally would have appreciated a SP release last month with ISA 2004 and then a six month down the road mini release to add Windows 2003 SP1. Oh well!