It's launch day!  Longtime musical group Cheap Trick opened up this morning's launch of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006 with an updated rendition of “Hello There” before turning over the floor to Steve Ballmer to introduce this long-awaited trio of products.

As an MSDN subscriber, you’ve likely already downloaded and sampled the new Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 releases and have helped to make this the largest launch ever for MSDN Subscriber Downloads with over 115 terabytes served up over its first weekend of availability.  Thank you!

If you haven’t yet had an opportunity to download the software, system loads have ebbed a bit and we welcome you to download the software and try it out.  For those of you waiting for your media shipment to try it out, I’m pleased to confirm that both Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 will ship to active MSDN Professional and MSDN Premium subscribers (including former MSDN Enterprise and MSDN Universal subscribers) as part of your December 2005 shipment.

We look forward to seeing you at an upcoming launch event.  For additional information or to register, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/events/2005launchevents/default.mspx.  Are you ready?

Best regards,

Seth Adams

Program Manager, MSDN Subscriptions