Microsoft has announced its intentions of launching the new version of Longhorn, the Windows Server operating system in the second half of 2007.

It was not only Longhorn that Microsoft referred to during the Management Summit but it also introduced a new scripting language for controlling Windows applications, stating that some of the security features of Vista will require additional Microsoft products.

According to Microsoft, Vista, which is supposed to go live early next year is going to lower administrative costs for IT departments, including rolling out, securing and monitoring the performance of PC networks. The company truly believes that Vista is going to be the most secure operating system ever to be released by Microsoft.

Still, in order to take full advantage of the features offered by Vista, IT departments will also have to purchase additional Microsoft products. For example, in order to use Vista’s Network Access Protection capability in order to quarantine laptops that have been used outside the network, one should also purchase System Management Server and the upcoming Longhorn Server.

Even if not on the market yet, Longhorn is expected to come out in the second half of the next year. Also, later this year there will be released a new command-line interface and scripting language for controlling Windows applications. Windows PowerShell is bound to replace the existing interface but it will also allow system administrators to quickly control groups of computers. This new feature called PowerShell will be included in Windows as well.

Even if Microsoft made it perfectly clear that EFI technology will no longer be included in Vista but in Longhorn it is yet to be seen if the deadline for Longhorn is going to be 2007 or maybe later, it would be only natural to assume that delays usual habit when it comes to Microsoft.

So, in order to make it clear, if you want to take full advantage of the long awaited Vista you’d better make sure you have everything what it actually needs to work properly. And we are not talking only about Microsoft’s products but the hardware configuration as well.