Windows Server 2008 RC0 released today

Today we released Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 0 which includes Internet Information Services 7.0.

This is a huge step forward for IIS and we already have over 1,200 customers who have signed up for the IIS7 Beta 2 go live license and fourteen hosters are currently in deployment on IIS7. Check out some of the customer stories here.

In addition, Windows Media Services 2008 RC0 is also available for download today. This provides 2x scalability over Windows Media Services 8.0 and supports a Server Core installation which enables reduced footprints for fixed-function streaming server scenarios and can be used as the back end to stream Silverlight video.

Like you, I am eagerly looking forward to us shipping Windows Server 2008 – as I blogged earlier, we are planning on launching Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 in February.

Namaste!