BEIJING, Feb. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- Microsoft Corp. released Windows Server 2008, a new version of its Windows operating system for powerful servers on Wednesday in Los Angeles.

The event also unveiled a new edition of Visual Studio 2008, used by computer programmers to create desktop and Web applications. Moreover, Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 database system was also promoted at the event; but it won't be available until the third quarter of this year.

"We're very early in the virtualization technology cycle," said the company's CEO Steve Ballmer at the Windows Server 2008 launch event, "Today, we launch our virtualization strategy in earnest."

The launch is vitally important to the company, which hopes sales of the updated server software will spur wider adoption of Windows Vista by corporate customers that have so far resisted the urge to upgrade from Windows XP.

"We think with Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, the integrated benefits that customers see will really encourage them to start looking at deployments of Vista on the desktop as well," said Jagan Narendran, the director of Microsoft Asia-Pacific's Infrastructure Server Business.

CEO Ballmer also touted the four benefits of the Server 2008: virtualization, more server roles like Server Core, embedded high availability, and new energy-efficient features for the green set.