Software release life cycle

As mentioned on the Exploring IE blog this morning, we have released the Windows Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate (RC). The IE 9 Release Candidate incorporates over 17,000 pieces of feedback received from customers, including 15,000 since IE 9 Beta. The RC not only offers better speed, reliability, and performance over Internet Explorer 8 but also incorporates some great new features including Tracking Protection.

Take a minute to learn about the exciting new features available in the MAP Toolkit v5.5 Beta and get involved in our Beta program. IT pros like you make a tremendous difference in the quality and effectiveness of the products we release and we want you to know how much we’d like you to be involved. The feedback that you provide is invaluable to us and as a way of saying thank you there will be a lot of potential prizes that can be won by those who participate. It all starts with a simple download.

Last week, we shared our perspective on what it means for a browser to be all around fast.  By harnessing the full power of the PC, Internet Explorer 9 Beta enables sites to create new types of web site.  In this post, we talk to Myspace about what an all around fast browser means for their site.

Today I’d like to pause for a moment and thank all the thousands of customers and partners —businesses of all sizes – who have signed up for the Windows Intune beta and used it to manage your Windows PCs. We appreciate the time you’ve taken to use this new cloud service, as well as the feedback you’ve given us through the forums and your own blogs.

As of today we’re no longer signing up new users for the Windows Intune beta; however, current beta participants can continue to use the Windows Intune beta and provide feedback until the next release.

Today is the day that the Windows Phone team has been driving towards, and we’re very excited to say that we’ve reached the biggest milestone for our internal team – the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Phone 7!  While the final integration of Windows Phone 7 with our partners’ hardware, software, and networks is underway, the work of our internal engineering team is largely complete. 

The Windows Intune Team would like to thank you for your participation in the April release of the Windows Intune beta! As many of you may know, we announced the second public Windows Intune Beta on July 12th and we hope you have had a chance to sign up for an account and are evaluating this most recent release. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can get the second beta here.

I’m very excited to share with this blog community, that our Windows Phone engineering team has hit a very meaningful milestone; one that we’re calling technical preview. We are certainly not done yet – but the craftsmen (and women) of our team have signed off that our software is now ready for the hands-on everyday use of a broad set of consumers around the world – and we’re looking forward to their feedback in the coming weeks, so that we can finish the best Windows Phone release ever together.

We’ve received great feedback from you on the release on our public beta of Windows Home Server Code Name “Vail” last month. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to give us your feedback and ideas. I’m happy to announce another update for the beta: starting today, German and Japanese editions of the Vail beta are now available for our international friends. Both the server and client components are completely localized into these two languages in this edition of the beta.

Wow! It’s only been about 30 hours since we announced the Windows Intune beta program and we’ve seen an incredible response from you and your colleagues. Due to your overwhelming interest and enthusiasm, we have already filled the beta program.

For those of you who are currently on the Windows Intune Beta, the product is in your hands. We are eager to receive your feedback in the Windows Intune forum. We hope you will be as confident and excited about Windows Intune as we are.