Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer officially
launched the company's long-awaited and thrice delayed Windows
Server 2003 operating system, claiming it is the right product for
businesses that want to "do more with less" in these tough economic
times.Customers are in "a real tight jam" because of
the sagging economy, Ballmer said. "But customers still want to do
more. The challenge is not just cost reduction. The challenge is
for people to be able to do more with less."
Bring in Windows Server 2003, a major new
release of Microsoft's operating system software for server
computers, launched at many events around the world yesterday (24
April).
"This is one of the most significant pieces of
work we have ever done and certainly the most significant piece of
work we have done in terms of IT professionals and the datacentre,"
Ballmer said, speaking in San Francisco.
In his trademark style, Ballmer summed up
enhancements to reliability, manageability, scalability,
information sharing and collaboration in the new server software.
Addressing a key area and a long time Microsoft weakness, Ballmer
said, "security is tattooed on our brains".
Windows Server 2003 has undergone code
reviews, includes a new software update service and comes with a
newly built IIS (Internet Information Server) web server, among
other security enhancements. IIS is one of the most vulnerable
parts of previous Windows server versions.
"I can't say there will be no [security]
issues; there will be fewer issues and we have built better
technologies to help you respond to the issues that do in fact come
about," Ballmer said.
The Microsoft executive also made a pitch to
Windows NT 4 users to upgrade. Windows Server 2003 reduces downtime
by a factor of eight over Windows NT 4 and offers double the
performance, among other advantages, he said.
More than a third of Microsoft's server
installed base still consists of systems running NT 4.0, despite
the supplier's efforts to get users to upgrade, research firm IDC
said recently.
Windows Server 2003 is "an order of magnitude"
more reliable than Windows Server 2002, according to analysis firm
the Yankee Group, which calls 2003 a "banner year for Microsoft and
its corporate customers" with a raft of major new product
introductions.
Later this year the company plans to introduce
Office 2003. Microsoft also launched Visual Studio .net 2003 and a
64-bit version of SQL Server Enterprise Edition, its database.
However, with corporate buyers curtailing
spending, Microsoft has to make the case that Windows Server 2003
is worth expending funds on, said Rob Helm, research director at
Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm focused on
Microsoft strategy and technology. Reliability and security are
important parts of that case, he said.
"Windows Server 2003 has gone through a more
rigorous development process. And just the fact that some features
are turned off out of the box make it a harder product to attack,"
Helm said.
Combined with Intel processors and computers
built by suppliers such as Unisys, Windows Server 2003 presents
tough competition for Unix server supplier Sun Microsystems,
according to Helm.
"It gives Microsoft a very big stick to beat
Sun with," Helm said. "Microsoft and its hardware partners can go
after very large scale server deployments. Windows Server 2003
alone does not change the competitive landscape. Along with trends
in the hardware market it could have some serious impact on
competing server vendors."
Even with all the enhancements, adoption of
Windows Server 2003 will not be dramatic, said Chris Le Tocq, an
analyst with Guernsey Research.
"This is replacing Windows 2000, which has
been shipping in various iterations for about four years. One of
the things with adoption especially of a server operating system is
that corporations don't change quickly. For a lot of people Windows
2000 is now a known quantity," he said.
Le Tocq expects slow but steady adoption, with
most users signing on because they buy new hardware. In the short
term between 6% and 7% of newly sold servers will likely come with
the Windows operating system.
The Yankee Group in a recent survey of 1,000
current Windows server users found that 34% of current users plan
to switch, and of those 37% hope to do so in the coming 12
months.