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Windows 7 Release Candidate is at most a couple of months away, with April 2009 as deadline, while the RTM could be reached within half a year, as early as August, but Microsoft is looking beyond the next iteration of the Windows platform. That’s right, Windows 8 is already cooking over in Redmond, with the software giant having kicked off the development process of Windows 7’s successor even last year, in 2008. Of course, Microsoft will only admit to the fact that it is in the planning stages of Windows 8, and with the Windows 7 work in full swing as the operating system moves from Beta to Release Candidate and onward, planning sounds just about right.
“I have been very involved in an effort around some early planning Win 8. It’s been largely focused on establishing a customer tour where we basically go on-site to customers and really drill into their broad cross-Windows server future needs. Not specifically looking at just the Win 8 timeframe, but just post-Win 7 and beyond. We’ve done that with the hope of getting these engagements and voice of the customer throughout the product lifecycle and driving that early on into the planning process for Win 8,” revealed Soni Meinke, a senior program manager in the Windows Server group.