BUSINESS
Windows Server 2003 launched in Ireland
01-05-2003
by John Cradden
Microsoft has stepped up its battle for the server market with the launch of its long-awaited Windows Server 2003 software in Ireland on Wednesday.
The new software, which is the company's most significant server product release since Windows 2000, is an integrated server platform that claims to improve IT efficiency, increase productivity and build applications faster.
Speaking at a press briefing in Dublin, Microsoft senior vice-president Paul Flessner said that some might question the wisdom of releasing such an important new product while corporate spending on IT is still weak, but Windows Server 2003 represented a new value proposition in terms of the total cost of ownership of IT. "They'll be working on a platform that offers a lower overall cost of ownership than our competitors," he said.
Microsoft is aiming to win greater market share in the server market from the current market leader in server software, Sun Microsystems, but also in the face of an increasing threat from the open source operating system, Linux. Flessner said that over 5,000 people have worked on the product over the last three years, and over 100 customers were involved in the development programme.
He said customers were concerned about complexity and budget above all else when considering new IT investments. "They want less growth on existing systems and more investment on new systems."
The new server suite is also billed as a big step forward for the company's .NET initiative, which aims to deliver information between different devices and tools and thus lower costs.
Microsoft also launched a new version of Visual Studio.NET and a 64-bit SQL server. The significance of the 64-bit boxes is their vastly increased memory availability and therefore "huge scalability on a single machine," said Flessner.
The company, in partnership with Intel and HP, recently set a record-breaking single system TPC-C benchmark of 658,277. To put that in perspective, this is the equivalent of one server processing 10 times the number of credit card transactions that take place in the world every minute, said Flessner. This represented a 200 percent improvement at one-tenth of the cost of what could be accomplished three years ago.
There are five versions of Windows Server 2003, including ones for data centres and enterprises as well as standard editions. There is also one for small businesses, but this is not due to be released until later this year.
Flessner said that there are 250 applications that are currently ready to run on the platform, with 2,500 more expected over the next six months, but doesnt expect customers will have any difficulties migrating from Unix platforms.
He admitted that Linux was having a strong impact on the server marketplace, but claimed that the total cost of ownership was higher than with Windows 2003. The market position of Unix is much more vulnerable, Flessner said, claiming that its rate of innovation has been flat over the last few years.
Security has also been stepped up. The new suite is the first major release to have gone through the full cycle of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative, which was started two years ago in a bid to address fundamental security flaws in existing Windows software.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 