Last November at the Microsoft IT Forum 2005, Microsoft announced its plan to migrate its server products from the 32-bit x86 platform to the new 64-bit x64 platform in 2006—a controversial topic among its enterprise customers. During the transition period, some Microsoft products will operate only on the x64 platform (effectively orphaning many of today's 32-bit servers), whereas other products will run on both the 32- and 64-bit versions for the short term to allow customers time to migrate to the 64-bit technology. Confused? Here's what you need to know about Microsoft's x64 server product plans.