Why IIS7 is not released for Windows 2003??

I just read a post by Scott Guthrie about IIS 7 being integrated in Vista. The Sidebar gadget to track the number of hits on IIS 7 is surely cool but what is the point ??

Vista won't be running as a server operating system, so why Microsoft are so stubborn and can't propose an upgrade for IIS 6? Don't tell me it's an architecture issue or the code is too complex for Windows 2003, that doesn't make any sense.

I had recently an interesting conversation with some members of the IIS team in Microsoft, and they confirm IIS 7 is only for Vista platform.

So as developers, we will play with IIS 7 but we will not be able to release it as our web server of choice until at least two or three years when Vista Server will finally be ready. If you add 2 years on average to get full adoption of a new operating system, we're talking about 2010!

4 Comments

  • Yes And according to me no point in talking about a technology that is work in 2010. By then there will be enough changes to get something better and new

  • Why would they do that? IIS is free, and they've gotta have some incentive for you to upgrade to Longhorn. Would you be willing to pay for IIS7 on Windows 2003? I doubt that many people would...

  • Well Dean the thing is that most companies (not the software ones) will still use Windows 2003 for at least the next three years! I don;t think a free upgrade is really a problem for Microsoft they did it already for the previous IIS versions.

  • Sure, but if they WANT IIS7, then they have to upgrade. If they could get IIS7 on Windows 2003, they wouldn't upgrade for even longer.

    Microsoft have never released a standalone IIS installation for installing on other OSes. IIS6 comes with Windows 2003, and that was it. You couldn't install IIS6 on Windows 2000 for example.

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