I’m at TEC 2009 in Las Vegas at the moment, and it was officially announced by Microsoft today that the release date for ILM 2 is now Q1 2010, as opposed to the previously publicised date of “any day now”. We should be getting an RC1 version in Q3 this year.
I asked if there were any technical reasons for this, hoping to hear of some impressive new development that they figured they couldn’t go to market without – but the answer was no, the features list is set. Why the long delay then? There was something about needing more real-world testing, and the need to develop scenario guidelines (I suppose that means walkthroughs), but that was the only explanation.
There is apparently some way you can get a pre-release license from Microsoft if you’re really determined to go ahead with ILM 2 in production, but I expect most organisations will not accept this, putting ILM 2 well and truly off the cards for 2009.
