I feel that this cycle came about largely due to the release cycles of the open-source world. It is a bit fast, but open-source has little to lose if they botch a release, as has been shown with several products. If Microsoft botches a release, they get hurt in big way$.

I also agree that and deprecations will need to stretch further to continue to keep the customers happy. Usually a deprecation is for good cause; but still, I think they'd want to grow the customer base and tread carefully.

Microsoft will also need to take care that faster release cycles don't introduce more issues, such as has been seen in some of the open source products.