Platform Delivered! Windows and Visual Studio RTM

Today is another exciting day for Developers and IT Professionals as we mark a new milestone for the Visual Studio and Windows product families.  Visual Studio 2012, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 have reached the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) phase and will soon be available for download.  The new platform supports application development, deployment and management on a variety of devices and screen sizes.  From smartphones to highly scalable cloud solutions, Visual Studio 2012, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 are ready to support your business and entertainment needs.

Visual Studio 2012

A major focus of the Visual Studio 2012 release is enabling developers to create great apps for Windows 8. Therefore, we’ve made it a priority to align our schedule with the Windows team. Today, on the same day as Windows 8, we also reached the RTM milestone for Visual Studio 2012. Stay tuned for our next milestone, when we make it available worldwide!

See the full blog post at https://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2012/08/01/visual-studio-2012-and-net-4-5-complete.aspx

Windows 8

We congratulate the Windows team on reaching the RTM milestone today, and wrapping up the Windows 8 release. RTM is an internal milestone, in which the bits are released to manufacturing. What this means is that the team is done engineering the software, and it is now being prepared for distribution. You can read more from the Windows team on the Windows Team and Building Windows 8 blogs.

See the full blog post at https://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/08/01/releasing-windows-8-august-1-2012.aspx

Windows Server 2012

We are proud to announce that Windows Server 2012 has been released to manufacturing. That means the final code is complete and we are delivering it to our hardware and software vendor partners this week. We will also make the software available to our volume licensing customers in the next couple of weeks.

Get out your calendars and free up some time on September 4. That’s when Windows Server 2012 will be generally available for evaluation and purchase by all customers around the world. On that day we will also host an online launch event where our executives, engineers, customers and partners will share more about how Windows Server 2012 can help organizations of all sizes realize the benefits of what we call the Cloud OS. You will be able to learn more about the features and capabilities and connect with experts and peers. You’ll also be able to collect points along the way for the chance to win some amazing prizes. You don’t want to miss it.  Visit this site to save the date for the launch event.

See the full blog post at https://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/08/01/windows-server-2012-released-to-manufacturing.aspx.

Additional Technical Resources

In addition to the great content you’ll see produced here on the Server and Tools Blog Network, there are a number of technical resources we want to make sure you are aware of.  First off the developers in the house will want to bookmark MSDN.  The MSDN site is organized into areas for Windows, Windows Phone and Windows Azure development.

Information Technology Professionals will want to visit TechNet frequently as it is the definitive location for news and information on Windows and Windows Server deployment, management and support.