Steve Guggenheimer’s anniversary keynote address at leading OEM conference highlights partner opportunities with upcoming Microsoft innovations:

“Today during a keynote address at Computex 2009 in Taipei, Microsoft’s OEM Division Corporate Vice President Steve Guggenheimer revealed that the company is confident with the progress made with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and that as a result, Microsoft will deliver Release to Manufacturing (RTM) code to partners in the second half of July. Windows 7 will become generally available on Oct. 22, 2009, and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be broadly available at the same time.”

Whow … that seems fast compared with Vista release …

Buried under the buzz around Windows 7 RC release, here’s an important update from Microsoft - Windows Server 2008 R2 release candidate.

Windows Server 2008 R2 is the first Windows operating system to be offered for only 64-bit processors. And Windows Server 2008 R2 can now support up to 256 logical processor cores for a single operating system instance, including enhancements in Hyper-V virtual machines which are able to address up to 32 logical cores in a single VM. These improvements not only guarantee more bang for your server hardware buck, but also offer better reliability with fewer locks and greater parallelism.

Regarding virtualization, Windows Server 2008 R2 provides the following virtualization types: Client and Server virtualization provided by Hyper-V and Presentation virtualization with Remote Desktop Services. Hyper-V virtualizes the system resources of a physical computer allowing you to provide a virtualized environment for operating systems and applications.

If you want to build your own cloud, this is the OS you want to use.

You can download it here.