[Microsoft: To Launch Next-generation Windows Blackcomb in Two and a Half Years]

At the RSA 2007 Security Conference in San Francisco, Ben Fathi, Microsoft's corporate vice president of the Windows Core Operating System Division, stated that Microsoft has already begun planning for the post-Vista era and aims to release its successor in the second half of 2009, about two and a half years after Vista. The prolonged five-year development cycle of Vista was an exception.

According to Microsoft's plan at the time of the Windows XP release in 2001, the next version of Windows was supposed to be called "Blackcomb," while "Longhorn" (later renamed to Vista) was merely intended as an interim version scheduled for release in 2003. However, in 2003, Windows suffered from unprecedented global worm attacks, forcing Microsoft to focus most of its resources on developing Windows XP Service Pack 2. This directly resulted in a significant reduction in Vista's features, multiple delays in its release date, and an elevated status beyond what was originally planned.

Ben Fathi remarked: "We set Longhorn aside temporarily, and when we revisited it, we found there was more work to be done. The significant improvements we wanted to achieve in Vista couldn't all be delivered at once."