Microsoft has made its most significant leap into the consulting services business by forming a $US1 billion joint venture with Andersen Consulting designed to help enterprise customers build e-commerce systems on Windows 2000.
In October 1996, Microsoft's Jim Allchin began handing Alpha code to 3500 developers for a product the company would unveil to the world as NT 5.0.
Enterprise customers that have well-established procedures for managing their desktops should find moving to Windows 2000 less expensive and less complex than those that have not, according to a new study. The study, released last week by US analyst The Meta Group concludes that well-organised companies can trim up to $US450 off the average per-desktop cost of upgrading to Win 2000 Professional, the desktop version of the operating system.
IT executives who have been eyeing Linux as an alternative operating system for enterprise servers are beginning to see more diverse options emerge from the open-source arena. In recent weeks, commercial Linux vendors have unveiled easy-to-install desktop operating systems, rolled out an operating system tuned for server environments and engaged in mergers that should help add muscle to the Linux movement.
Novell has quietly shelved a key directory-integration tool, which is likely to force IT executives with mixed environments to make an either/or choice between NetWare and Microsoft's forthcoming Windows 2000. At issue is the redirect capability of Novell Directory Services (NDS) for Windows NT. Redirect allows users to reroute authentication and access-control calls made to NT 4.0 domains into NDS, which nearly eliminates user management on NT servers. However, in NDS 8 for NT - the next version of the software - redirect is being replaced by a bi-directional synchronisation tool called DirXML.
In a roundabout way, IT executives may have got a gift from Microsoft last week when the company confirmed that Windows 2000 will not be generally available until early next year.
Microsoft will lock down code for Windows 2000 later this month as it prepares the final version of the software that has been years in the making.
Although Microsoft's Active Directory will eventually enjoy widespread use when Windows 2000 ships, it by no means will be the only directory in the enterprise.
Cabletron Systems' Spectrum business unit has licensed directory technology from the Sun-Netscape Alliance and will bundle it with Spectrum policy-based management software.
Remember Banyan? How about VINES, Beyond Mail and StreetTalk? Well, Banyan was expected to launch Banyan Directory Services last week in the US, an implementation and consulting service designed to help enterprises deploy the directory of their choice.
Microsoft crisscrossed the technology landscape last week like a drunken sailor, stopping to hoist pints in a variety of industry establishments, including telecom, messaging, desktop computing and mobile devices.
Extensible markup language (XML) is becoming such an important standard that it will be a common thread through all of Microsoft's products, company officials say.
Microsoft has posted patches that will fix vulnerabilities in Site Server and Internet Information Server (IIS). Site Server and IIS could potentially expose sensitive data on corporate Web sites.
