Analyst firms Gartner and IDC have warned against swift migrations
from Windows NT 4.0 after Microsoft said the system is nearing the
end of the road.
Thomas Bittman, a senior analyst at Gartner, said mission-critical
Windows servers should be moved off NT 4.0 no later than the end of
2003, when Microsoft will start charging for bug fixes. But for
non-critical systems his advice is to keep going.
"There is no reason why Windows should not be like other operating
systems - you still come across old systems running tried and
trusted applications," he said. "There is no need to rush off and
upgrade if everything is working fine. Wait until the server runs
out of steam and upgrade when you upgrade the hardware."
Dan Kusnetzky, IDC's vice-president for systems and software
research, said, "There are something like five million NT 4.0
server licences out there. Even if only half of them are active,
the system is not going to disappear before 2005, maybe later. For
many applications, Windows NT 4.0 is good enough and managers do
not want to touch it."
He advises caution in the uptake of Active Directory. "Microsoft
still has to address some serious issues [with Active Directory].
Novell had similar problems with Directory Services in Netware 4.0
but soon provided the necessary tools. Microsoft has yet to learn
this lesson," he said.
Windows NT 4.0 withdrawal roadmap
1 July 2002: Standard, Enterprise and Terminal Server editions
withdrawn from Direct OEM channel. Standard and Enterprise
full-packaged product (FPP) withdrawn from resellers.
1 Jan 2003: QFE (Quick Fix Engineering) will be charged
for.
1 July 2003: Windows NT server 3.0 no longer available
through System Builder channel.
1 Jan 2004: Pay per incident, Premier support and QFE will
be withdrawn. Online support turned off.
Security updates will be available throughout this period.