With XP's Service Pack 2 out of the way, Microsoft's Jim Allchin has finally turned his full attention to the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. What Allchin does is decide what Microsoft can ship, and when, then drive the process so that things get done. Anything that's still mushy gets chopped, and the most obvious victim in this case is the futuristic WinFS file system.
This will not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the saga. Microsoft has been working on this stuff for more than a decade, with Allchin showing slides of the OFS (Object File Store) in the Cairo version of NT way back in 1992. In fact, Allchin has been working on it for even longer. Before joining Microsoft, he designed Banyan Vines (Virtual Integrated Network Service), a distributed network operating system, now owned by Cisco.
CNet has an interview with Allchin here.
