Leader: What's happened to Microsoft's roadmap?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stomped around the stage at the company's annual worldwide partner conference in Toronto this week with his usual enthusiasm, urging Redmond's channel partners to "win, win, win" and "compete" for every bit of business.

But despite four days of backslapping, high fives and talk of how well Microsoft is doing, there was something of a hollow ring to Ballmer's motivational escapades and the many 'humorous' Microsoft executive videos - one of which was a version of Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' with the words 'Microsoft is the partner-centric company for me' over the famous line 'Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me'.

During the conference, Ballmer and other Microsoft execs harped on about the push for the small and medium-sized business market, specialisation in vertical industries, the business applications market (and competing with SAP) and improvements to security.

But delegates, and ultimately end users, were left without answers to key questions about Microsoft's product roadmap. The release date of Windows XP Service Pack 2, which had been delayed twice, was finally announced for August but it was clear from the Microsoft executives that the collective effort in bringing this out with all its security enhancements has had a negative impact on the rest of Redmond's line-up.

Companies are starting to think about how they should plan for Longhorn and delegates wanted to know how to map out their investment but all Ballmer said was: "We're going to be as transparent as we can be, which is why we're not going to give a ship date [for Longhorn] today."

Release dates for other key products are now going to be missed as well, including the Windows Update Service patch-management tool and System Center 2005.

Ballmer tried to reassure channel delegates that Microsoft will compete with SAP in the SME market for business applications but recent revelations over merger talks between the two companies has thrown doubt on Microsoft's commitment in the minds of some channel partners.

While Microsoft's commitment not to release things "until they are right" is admirable, it does not help corporate IT planning. With the commercial sector slowly starting to kick-start investment in IT again, users are demanding a much clearer product roadmap from Microsoft with release dates that are not continually delayed.