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Microsoft Codenames
As in every software company, Microsoft products start life as a project codename. Exactly how these codenames are decided remains a mystery, and indeed some suggest that there is meaning to be found hidden in their selection. Such a theory is encouraged by the eagerness with which Microsoft representatives suggest that we should not attach too much significance to codenames, even implying the names are selected almost at random.
To help you make your own mind up, we present the following as yet incomplete list of Microsoft codenames. If you can add to this list in any way, please email us at codenames@mattmags.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
Last updated: June 2007
| Codename | Product | Derivation |
| DEVELOPMENT TOOLS | ||
| Thunder | Visual Basic | |
| Boston | Visual Studio 97 | |
| Blackbird | Internet Studio, a development environment for MSN which eventualy became Visual InterDev. | |
| Aspen | Visual Studio 98 (6.0) | Ski resort in Colorado. |
| Jakarta | Visual J++ 6.0 | Capital of Indonesia, located on the island of Java. |
| Cool | C# | Short for ‘C-based Object-Oriented Language’. |
| Rainier | Visual Studio .NET | Mount Rainier is a dormant volcano south of Seattle. |
| Everett | Visual Studio .NET 2003 | Town north of Seattle. |
| Whidbey | Visual Studio .NET 2005 | Island north of Seattle. |
| Whitehorse | Design tools supplied with Visual Studio .NET 2005 | Capital of Yukon Territory in Canada which became famous during the Klondike Gold Rush. |
| Burton | Visual Studio 2005 Team System | Unknown, although it is the name of a North American manufacturer of snowboards. |
| Orcas | Successor to VS.NET 2005 for developing ‘Longhorn’ applications | Island north of Whidbey. |
| Hawaii | Successor to 'Orcas' | An island 'much further out' than Orcas or Whidbey. Also, where the development team plan to celebrate its completion. |
| OPERATING SYSTEMS | ||
| Janus | Windows 3.1 | |
| Sparta | Windows for Workgroups 3.1 | |
| Snowball | Windows for Workgroups 3.11 | |
| Daytona | Windows NT 3.5 | |
| Cairo | Collected technologies that may eventually come to fruition in Longhorn. | Capital of Egypt on the river Nile. |
| Impala | Windows NT4 Embedded | |
| Chicago | Windows 95 | The windy city. |
| Nashville | Internet Explorer 4 Desktop Update for Windows 95 | The home of country music, in Tennessee. |
| Memphis | Windows 98 | City in Tennessee. |
| Whistler | Windows XP | Mountain in Canadian ski resort around four hours drive north of Seattle. (The ‘XP’ stands for eXPerience.) |
| Lonestar | Tablet PC 2004 | |
| Longhorn | Originally successor to Windows XP, and then successor to Windows Server 2003 | The Longhorn Saloon & Grill is situated between the Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. |
| Indigo | Communication services in ‘Longhorn’ | |
| Avalon | Display services used by ‘Longhorn’ | |
| Blackcomb | Original name for server-side version of Longhorn | Another mountain in the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort. |
| BACKEND SERVERS | ||
| Sphinx | SQL Server 7.0 | Mythical creature famous for asking riddles. |
| Plato | SQL Server 7.0 OLAP Services | One of the greatest analytical thinkers in ancient Greece and pupil to Socrates. |
| Shiloh | SQL Server 2000 | Location of major Civil War battle in Tennessee. |
| Liberty | SQL Server 2000 64-bit | |
| Aurum | SQL Server 2000 data mining features | Latin word for gold. |
| Yukon | SQL Server 2005 | Yukon Territory in Canada, capital city Whitehorse. |
| Katmai | SQL Server 2008 | The Katmai National Park and Preserve is in the south of Alaska (also used by Intel for the Pentium III). |
| Osmium | Exchange Server 5.5 | One of the Platinum group of elements and the most dense metal known. Atomic number 77 in the Periodic table. |
| Platinum | Exchange 2002 | Silvery-white metal often used in jewellery. Atomic number 78 in the Periodic table. |
| Titanium | Exchange 2003 | As strong as steel but half the weight. Atomic Number 22 in the Periodic table. |
| Kodiak | Abandoned successor to Exchange 2003 that was supposed to use the SQL Server 2005 database engine. | Island in the Gulf of Alaska. |
| Falcon | Message Queue Server (MSMQ) | |
| Viper | Transaction Server 2.0 | |
| Tahoe | SharePoint Server 2001 | A lake resort between California and Nevada. |
| Hydra | Windows NT Terminal Services | Multi-headed dragon-like creature from Greek mythology. |
| Babylon | Host Integration Server 2000 | |
| Cedar | COM Transaction Integrator for CICS and IMS (COMTI) | |
| Wolfpack | Cluster Server | |
| Vienna | Office Live Communication Server 2005 | Capital of Austria. |
| Hermes | System Management Server | |
| MOBILE PLATFORMS | ||
| Alder | Windows CE 1.0 | Thanks to an internal set of tools called the OEM Adaption Kit (OAK), early releases of Windows CE were codenamed after trees |
| Birch | Windows CE 2.0 | |
| Cedar | Windows CE 3.0 | |
| Merlin | Pocket PC 2002 | |
| Stinger | Smartphone 2002 | |
| Starlite | .NET Compact Framework 1.0 | |
| Talisker | Windows CE 4.0 | With the introduction of .NET, and new colleagues to the team, codenames were based on whiskeys. |
| Jameson | Windows CE 4.1 | |
| McKendric | Windows CE 4.2 | |
| Macallan | Windows CE 5.0 | |
| Yamazaki | Windows CE 6.0 | |
| MISCELLANEOUS | ||
| Cirrus | Access 1.0 | |
| Athena | Outlook Express | |
| Hailstorm | .NET My Services | |
| Nile | OLE DB | River in Africa |
| Kajera | OLE DB provider for ODBC | River that, like the Nile, flows from Lake Victoria. |
| Trident | Dynamic HTML | |
| Denali | Active Server Pages | Denali National Park in Alaska contains North America’s highest mountain. |
| Springboard | Microsoft’s security project which will result in Office 2003 SP1, Windows XP SP1 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 | |
| Palladium | A forthcoming secure run-time environment called Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) | Silvery-white metal in the Platinum group. Atomic Number 46 in the Periodic Table. |
| Xenon | Successor to the Xbox | |
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