Microsoft said in May that it would release the third beta of Longhorn early 2007, but did not say exactly when. The OS is still on track for its delayed release by the end of 2007, said Bob Visse, a senior director for Microsoft Windows Server marketing.

Beta 3 of Longhorn is expected to be feature complete and will be tweaked only for performance and quality control before the first release candidates of the product appear, he said.

Key new features in Longhorn include the ability for administrators to more easily manage the OS as well as enhanced security, Visse said. These are all features users had requested after the release of Windows Server 2003, the current version of Windows Server.

On Tuesday, Microsoft will release a second service pack of patches and updates for Windows Server 2003, with technology that will help IT administrators prepare hardware running Windows Server for the deployment of Windows Vista, Visse added. Windows Vista, the long-awaited update to the Windows client, will be available to business customers at the end of the month.