An alleged ex-employee of Microsoft Corp. has reportedly released a document that seems to shade some light on the release date of Windows 8 operating system (OS). Apparently, Microsoft plans to launch the next-generation client OS already in the middle of next year.

Chris Green, who is believed to be an ex-Microsoft developer, has revealed a document called “Estimated Product Support Life Cycles” on a Microsoft blog. The document unveils product support schedules and product launch dates for tens of Microsoft’s major software products. Even though the document was removed from the blog, it was then republished by Hexus.net web-site.

Based on the data in the document, Microsoft plans to launch Windows 8 operating system on the 1^st of July, 2011, less than two years after Windows 7 OS hit the market. Even though authenticity of the document could not be verified, all the dates in the document regarding the already launched product seem to be correct. Accordingly, it may be assumed that at present Microsoft plans to launch its next-gen OS in mid-2011, not in 2012, as it was anticipated earlier.

In the nineties and early aughts, Microsoft released a new desktop operating system every two to three years, at least, this was true for Windows 95, 98, ME and XP and was not particularly true for workstation OSes – there was a four-year gap between the NT4 and 2000. However, Windows Vista – shipped over five years after the XP because the company had to reassign software developers to patch the latter and release service pack 2. Windows 7 release about three years after Vista brings Microsoft back on track with two to three years cadence and Windows 8 may further shrink that cadence to about two years time.

Microsoft did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows