The long-awaited launch yesterday of Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system is the culmination of four years development and a $1 billion (€1.02 billion) investment. Although critics have said Microsoft has lost a lot of ground to competitors by not releasing the system sooner, Windows 2000 has been well-received by early adopters who say it offers greater computing power necessary to handle the upsurge in Internet activity.
Windows 2000 is more likely to appeal to corporate users seeking to upgrade the Windows NT 4.0 operating system, than consumers currently running Windows 98. The home user is expected to benefit from its Internet application services and increased security features, but the greatest appeal will be for businesses which want to conduct complex business activities on or off-line.
Industry observers who have been closely monitoring the new system's development have, in general, given the product favourable reviews. They agree it is the nearest Microsoft has come to developing a product which will match consumer expectations. In Ireland, Bull Cara has been trialling Windows 2000 for four months, and established a Windows 2000 readiness lab for customers to "test drive" the software in a simulation lab supported by Windows 2000 trained consultants.
According to Mr Damien Murphy, senior consultant with Bull Cara, the new operating system's most compelling feature is its ability significantly to reduce the cost of ownership of a Windows networked environment.
"It is much more reliable than Windows NT. They have removed 45 of the 50 reboots required every time a change was made to an NT server," he says. "It also entirely manages the software deployment process, which had to be done manually in NT.
"Now the functionality is incorporated into the product allowing it to install itself anywhere. There is also a `self-healing' feature in the event of accidentally deleting an application," Mr Murphy says.
Windows 2000 also gives network operators the option to deploy the system to operate on some desktops solely as a Windows-based terminal, instead of using full PC capabilities. Defined as "thin client" technology, it has been licensed from Citrix Systems and means special versions of Windows NT no longer need to be purchased to meet this requirement.
The primary criticism that has been levelled at Windows 2000 has been the time it has taken to bring the product to market. According to analyst Mr Rob Enderle at research firm Giga Information Group: "About two years ago, they probably would have been able to hold back the emergence of competing products, but now the genie's out of the bottle."
The most threatening "genies" come in the shape of the freely distributed Linux operating system and rival Sun Microsystems, which successfully got leading e-commerce companies such as eBay and Amazon.com, to deploy their software.
Another major blot on Microsoft's horizon appeared last week when there was something of a market over-reaction to a survey conducted by industry research company, Gartner Group. It forecast Windows 2000 adoption would be slow and that companies switching to it this year would experience compatibility problems with existing software. On foot of this Microsoft shares fell last Friday.
This week, however, Gartner indicated the estimates had been taken out of context, and more fence-mending was achieved when Dell and Compaq gave the new operating system high marks at Microsoft's gala launch event for Windows 2000 which began on Tuesday.
Dell chief executive Mr Michael Dell said he thought adoption of the software would be "strong". It is thought he may have been trying to negate comments he made last week that Linux was gaining strength and that he didn't see a massive, immediate acceleration in business driven by Windows 2000 upgrades.
Mr Michael Capellas, chief executive of Compaq also rather helpfully downplayed fears that glitches may feature in the new system.
"In any rollout if you don't have some problems with some legacy [previous software], then you haven't been pushing the envelope. We believe the rollout [of Windows 2000] will be very smooth," Mr Capellas said.
Mr Murphy of Bull Cara expects most large corporations will wait for Microsoft to issue the first set of bug fixes before widespread adoption begins. He estimates this will take around three months.
However, if registration for yesterday's launch of Windows 2000 in the RDS, Dublin is a yardstick, it seems there will be plenty of immediate adopters of the new system. More than 2,000 people registered for the 1,300 places available at the product launch.
Microsoft plans to spend more money than ever before on this product launch, committing $200 million to advertising alone.
This is the company's first major release since Microsoft was ruled to be a monopoly last year. A possible punishment stemming from the antitrust suit brought by the Justice Department and 19 US states over its actions in the Web-browser market has yet to be determined, although both sides are currently meeting with an arbitrator.
Meanwhile, the European Union has begun an investigation into whether Windows 2000 has been designed to make competitors' software difficult to interact with the operating system to give the company a position of dominance in the software and electronic commerce market. Microsoft is co-operating with the investigation.
Microsoft's 1,500 employees based at its Sandyford European Product Development Centre (EPDC) and European Operations Centre (EOC) have played a major role in preparing Windows 2000 for its customers throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The European Product Development Centre began working on the localisation of Windows 2000 in 1997. The software will be available in 23 languages, 16 of which were entirely localised in Ireland.
