Bob Muglia, senior vice-president of the Windows Server division, said Windows 2003 R2 would be the interim version of Windows 2003 that organisations on the Software Assurance programme would receive as part of their subscription. R2 will pave the way to Longhorn, the next full upgrade, which is due in 2006-2007, Muglia said. "The release includes a lot of things that ship separately, such as Sharepoint Services," he added. R2 will also include the next version of Microsoft’s .net Framework for building web services-based applications, Muglia said. A major focus of the new operating system is support for branch offices. "We are focusing on file sharing and file replication," he said, to support efficient wide area network communications between branch and head offices.