List of Microsoft codenames
Microsoft codenames are given by Microsoft to products it has in development before these products are given the names by which they appear on store shelves. Many of these products are of major significance to the IT community, and so the terms are often widely used in discussions before the official release. Microsoft usually does not announce a final name until shortly before the product is publicly available. It is not uncommon for Microsoft to reuse codenames a few years after a previous usage has been abandoned.
There has been some suggestion that Microsoft may move towards defining the real name of their upcoming products earlier in the product development lifecycle to avoid needing product codenames.
Operating systems
Windows platform development semesters
The following are code names used for internal development cycle iterations of the Windows core, although they are not necessarily the code names of any of the resulting releases. With some exceptions, the semester designations usually matches the Windows version number.| Codename | Semester | Release | Notes | Ref |
| Titanium | 19H1 | Windows 10 May 2019 Update | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. | |
| Vanadium | 19H2 | Windows 10 November 2019 Update | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. | |
| Vibranium | 20H1 | Windows 10 May 2020 Update Windows 10 October 2020 Update Windows 10 May 2021 Update Windows 10 November 2021 Update Windows 10 2022 Update | Named after the fictional metal Vibranium in Marvel Comics as continuing the previous line of chemical elements with Chromium could have caused confusion with the web browser project. | |
| Manganese | 20H2 | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. | ||
| Iron | 21H1 | Windows Server 2022 | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. | |
| Cobalt | 21H2 | Windows 11 | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. | |
| Nickel | 22H2 | Windows 11 2022 Update Windows 11 2023 Update | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. Originally planned to be the 22H1 semester, although that semester was ultimately skipped and Nickel shifted to 22H2, expanded to span the entire year. | |
| Copper | 23H1 | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. | ||
| Zinc | 23H2 | Windows Server, version 23H2 | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. | - |
| Gallium | 24H1 | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. | - | |
| Germanium | 24H2 | Windows 11 2024 Update Windows Server 2025 Windows 11 2025 Update | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. | - |
| Dilithium | 25H1 | Named after the fictional material from Star Trek. | - | |
| Selenium | 25H2 | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. | - | |
| Bromine | 26H1 | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. | - | |
| Krypton | 26H2 | Named after the chemical element in the periodic table. | - |
[Microsoft Servers]
SQL Server family
| Codename | Final name | Notes | Ref |
| SQLNT | SQL Server 4.21 | ||
| SQL95 | SQL Server 6.0 | ||
| Hydra | SQL Server 6.5 | ||
| Sphinx | SQL Server 7.0 | ||
| Plato | OLAP Services 7.0 | "OLAP Services" was later renamed Microsoft Analysis Services | |
| Shiloh | SQL Server 2000 | Version 8 | |
| Rosetta | Reporting Services in SQL Server 2000 | ||
| Yukon | SQL Server 2005 | Version 9 | |
| Picasso | Analysis Services in SQL Server 2005 | ||
| Katmai | SQL Server 2008 | Version 10 | |
| Kilimanjaro | SQL Server 2008 R2 | Version 10.5 | |
| Blue | SQL Server 2008 Report Designer 2.0 | This is the standalone release of the tool for Reporting Services. It must not be confused with Report Builder 2.0. | |
| Denali | SQL Server 2012 | Version 11 | |
| Juneau | SQL Server Data Tools | Was included in SQL Server 2012, later released as a standalone downloadable application | |
| Crescent | Power View | A data visualisation tool that originally shipped as part of SQL Server 2012, later an add-in for Microsoft Excel | |
| SQL14 | SQL Server 2014 | Version 12 | |
| Hekaton | SQL Server In-Memory OLTP | In-memory database engine built into SQL Server 2014 | |
| SQL16 | SQL Server 2016 | Version 13 | |
| Helsinki | SQL Server 2017 | Version 14 | |
| Seattle | SQL Server 2019 | Version 15 | |
| Aris | SQL Server Big Data Clusters | Announced at Microsoft Ignite 2018 event on September 24–28. Retirement announced for Feb-28 2025 | |
| Dallas | SQL Server 2022 | Version 16. Public preview available for download. Announced at Microsoft Build 2022 event on May 24 |
Developers tools
Languages
| Codename | Final name | Notes | Ref |
| Clarity | Language Integrated Query | LINQ Language extensions to expose query syntax natively to languages such as Visual Basic.NET and C# | |
| D | M | Modelling language | |
| Jakarta | Visual J++ | Named after the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta | |
| Metro | Microsoft Design language | A typography-based design language |
[Office software]
| Codename | Preliminary name | Final name | Notes | Ref |
| Albany | Microsoft Equipt | Microsoft's all-in-one, subscription-based service for office, communication, and security software | ||
| Bandit | Schedule+ 1.0 | Microsoft's first Personal Information Manager | ||
| Barney | Money 1.0 | Microsoft's personal finance software | ||
| Betty | Money 2.0 | |||
| Budapest | Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access 2005 | |||
| Bullet | Microsoft Mail 3.0 | Microsoft's first LAN-based email product written in-house | ||
| Cirrus | Microsoft Access 1.0 | |||
| CRM V1.0, Tsunami | Microsoft CRM 1.0 | The platform was initially codenamed Tsunami, but once the decision was made to make it an actual product it was just changed to the initials as the initials were enough of a codename. | ||
| Danube Phase I | Microsoft CRM 1.2 | |||
| Danube Phase II | Microsoft CRM 3 | |||
| Dino | Microsoft Money 3.0 | |||
| Kilimanjaro | Titan | Microsoft CRM 4 | Was originally Kilimanjaro but changed to Titan, as Kilimanjaro was too difficult to spell | |
| Deco | Microsoft PhotoDraw | |||
| Greenwich | Real-Time Communications Server 2003 | Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003 | ||
| Istanbul | Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 | |||
| Maestro | Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 | |||
| Opus | Word for Windows v1.0 for Windows 2.x | |||
| Oslo | Microsoft BizTalk Server SOA, SQL Server Modeling CTP | Set of Service-oriented architecture technologies | ||
| Ren, Stimpy | Wren | Microsoft Outlook | "Stimpy" was merged into "Ren", which later became "Wren". "Ren" and "Stimpy" are references to Ren and Stimpy, characters of an American animated television series. "Wren", a homophone of "Ren", is a reference to Christopher Wren, the architect of St Paul's Cathedral. | |
| Rigel | Skype Room Systems | A meeting room system designed to interface with Skype | ||
| Tahiti | Microsoft SharedView | A screen sharing tool which allows users to take over sessions and interact with remote desktops. No audio or conference facilities. | ||
| Tahoe | SharePoint Portal Server 2001 | |||
| Utopia | Microsoft Bob | Intended to be a user-friendly GUI |
Other codenames
| Codename | Preliminary name | Final name | Notes | Ref |
| Acropolis | Application framework for Smart Clients | |||
| Aero Diamond | Used during the development of Windows Vista to describe a set of advanced user interface effects for the Desktop Window Manager to be introduced after Vista's release | |||
| Alexandria | Zune Marketplace | An online music store | ||
| Argo | Zune | A digital media player | ||
| Atlanta | A cloud service that monitors Microsoft SQL Server deployments | |||
| Baraboo | Microsoft HoloLens | |||
| Blackbird | An online content-authoring platform centered around the concept of distributed Object Linking and Embedding and meant to be an alternative to HTML. The developer tools were originally released in beta and some titles were made available on MSDN before it was scrapped in favor of web development around ASP and ActiveX and the designer was refashioned into Visual InterDev. | |||
| Concur | Aims to: define higher-level abstractions ; for today's imperative languages; that evenly support the range of concurrency granularities; to let developers write correct and efficient concurrent applications; with much latent parallelism; that can be efficiently mapped to the user's. | |||
| Dallas | Aims to help discover, purchase and manage, premium data subscriptions in the Windows Azure platform | |||
| Dorado | Zune PC Client | |||
| Eldorado | MVP Reconnect | Program to recognize alumni of Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional award program when they left the program in good standing or were not re-awarded. | ||
| HailStorm | .NET My Services | Collection of web services centered around the storage and retrieval of information. Cancelled before it could fully materialize. | ||
| Honolulu | Windows Admin Center | |||
| Ibiza | Azure Portal | Website for managing cloud resources | ||
| Kratos | PowerApps | Software for building and sharing native, mobile, and Web apps | ||
| Kumo | Bing | Microsoft's set of features improving Live Search search engine | ||
| Marvel | The Microsoft Network | The classic version of MSN, originally as a proprietary, "walled garden" online service | ||
| Media2Go | Windows Mobile software for Portable Media Centers | Platform built on Windows Mobile found on portable media players | ||
| Metro | XML Paper Specification | Named after Metro by T-Mobile, a wireless prepaid service in the United States. | ||
| Milan | Surface | Microsoft PixelSense | Table-top style computer with multi-touch touchscreen interface | |
| Mira | Windows CE.NET-based technology for smart displays | |||
| Monaco | Music-making program similar to Apple GarageBand application | |||
| Origami | Ultra-Mobile PC | |||
| Palladium | Trusted Windows | Effort to develop a small, very secure operating environment within Windows, including curtained memory, trusted input, and graphics. Project renamed to Next-Generation Secure Computing Base, and was never fully implemented. | ||
| Softsled | Software based Windows Media Center Extender | |||
| Springfield | Microsoft Popfly | Website in Alpha testing stage providing mashup and webpages creation tools, with publishing as Rich Internet Application option | ||
| Sydney | Bing Chat | Copilot | ||
| Wolverine | TCP/IP stack for Windows for Workgroups 3.11 | Named after the Wolverine, a character from Marvel Comics. | ||
| Pink | Microsoft Kin |