Microsoft announced plans to launch a series of new products

In a series of new product announcements earlier this week, Microsoft launched a future plan for Windows Server and officially launched a new script engine - PowerShell.

The announcement was made by Microsoft vice president of tools & servers, Bob Muglia, at the TechEd IT Forum hosted by Microsoft on November 14 with 7,500 attendees.

One of the top priorities that Bob Muglia emphasized is Windows PowerShell 1.0, Microsoft's new scripting and command line tool, so that IT managers can use it to control Windows systems. PowerShell will help IT professionals "achieve higher performance, easier system administration and automate more stages", Microsoft's statement.

PowerShell is designed to work in an Exchange Server 2007 environment, System Center Operations Manager 2007, version 2 of System Center Data Protection Manager and System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

PowerShell has been integrated into the next version of Windows Server, Longhorn, and is considered one of the important steps that Microsoft prepared for the launch of Longhorn next year. PowerShell also works with Windows XP and Server 2003, but some experts complain that it does not work in the Vista environment.

Also this week, Microsoft will announce the RC version of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and 64-bit version of Windows XP Professional. Microsoft said that Windows Server 2003 SP2 will offer a host of new features, including better security, greater reliability and higher performance.

Microsoft also said it will provide Longhorn Server Beta 3 (the next version of Windows Server) in the first half of next year.