Great expectations
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Can Windows Server 2003 become the rallying point for the Microsoft operating system world?
Microsoft has a problem - a major problem. Around half of the customers of its most important piece of enterprise software - the Windows Server operating system - are stuck on an eight-year-old version of the product. They haven't moved from Windows NT4 for two reasons: first, because it is a proven technology for low- and mid-end tasks; and second, because of the technical hurdles that Microsoft has left in their way.
On 24 April, with the launch of Windows Server 2003, the company thinks it can start to reclaim that 46% of server customers who are stuck on NT. Certainly, its predecessor, Windows 2000 Server, did not do the job. Even Microsoft executives acknowledge that moving to the key enhancement to Windows 2000, the product's directory services module, Active Directory, was so complex it caused many users to cancel any upgrade plans. Additionally, Windows 2000 was almost as weak on security as NT4. Protection was layered on top of the operating system rather than hard-coded in - not exactly a selling point for an upgrade.
With Server 2003, Microsoft feels it has addressed those issues, plus added other features and introduced new packaging to drive adoption. The level of these features depends on which of four version users adopt:
As with previous versions, this is by no means just an operating system. Microsoft bundles in elements that other vendors sell separately, most notably the Microsoft application server, which includes database access functions, transaction process monitoring, server-based application deployment, web serving and message queuing.
The new software, however, centres on other aspects: Active Directory ease of deployment; operating system and mobile access security; enhancements to make
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Some of that content will provide a compelling reason for many organisations to upgrade. However, afraid of delaying these upgrades any further (Server 2003 has already had its launch date put back three times in the past two years), Microsoft is leaving out key components that were originally slated for inclusion in the initial release. Some of these much-anticipated components will now appear over the next six to eight months - at no additional charge, according to Microsoft (see box).
That phased approach is a departure from Microsoft's practice of releasing systems software products as a whole. That policy underpinned its defence against anti-trust allegations brought by the US Justice Department. In the now-defunct case, Microsoft maintained that many such components were inseparable from the operating system.
One of the key components that will not appear until later in the year will also help ease the migration from NT to Server 2003. Virtual Server, technology recently acquired from emulation software specialist Connectix, enables multiple operating systems to run on the same server, thus potentially enabling users to support NT4 and Server 2003 applications on the same machine. That kind of partitioning facility, which has long been a feature in Unix and mainframe environments, will also bolster Microsoft's server consolidation story.
Server 2003 is not the only product that will emerge from Microsoft in late April. Simultaneously, the company will ship Visual Studio .Net 2003, a web services-centric upgrade to its application development environments. But the reception of Server 2003 is the critical element if Microsoft is to take the mass of its users with it as its server operating systems grow in sophistication.
