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Gates Unveils Windows 2000 Follow-on Roadmap

SAN FRANCISCO – Microsoft Corp. chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates today provided details about which products customers should expect to see this year that build on Windows 2000.

Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) launched Windows 2000 Professional, Server, and Advanced Server here today.

"Windows 2000 is the kickoff for a whole new generation of products that we’re building. We’re taking everything that we do, and putting that on Windows 2000," Gates said.

On a PowerPoint slide, Gates showed a list of nine products to come this year: Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, Windows 2000/64-bit; Embedded Windows 2000; SQL Server 2000; Exchange Server 2000; Application Center 2000; Commerce Server 2000; BizTalk Server 2000; and Host Integration Server 2000.

Detailing the roadmap for SQL Server 2000 a little more today, Microft announced that the global Beta 2 testing program for Microsoft’s flagship RDBMS will begin in April. That version will allow customers to evaluate a previously undisclosed feature called distributed partitioned views. Microsoft used that technology this week to achieve the highest performance results yet published for the Transaction Processing Performance Council (www.tpc.org) OLTP benchmark, the TPC-C.

Exchange Server 2000 is expected to be one of the first applications to fully leverage the power of Microsoft’s Active Directory.

The roadmap disclosures revealed name changes for two products. Application Center 2000 was previously known as AppCenter Server. During the Windows 2000 launch, Microsoft demonstrated the management of a large Web server farm with Application Center 2000. Capabilities included the ability to add a new Web server through Application Center 2000 by polling the existing machines in the farm and automatically configuring the new server and bringing it online in about a minute.

Host Integration Server 2000 is the follow-on to SNA Server. It has previously been referred to by its code name, "Babylon." – Scott Bekker

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

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