“Most people, including those strongly in the Active Directory camp, seem to think that it's a first-generation directory service and it's not quite there, it's not quite as competitive across the board as far as NDS is from Novell,”
“The gap certainly will close dramatically with Active Directory. NT's directory services have been fairly widely deployed, even given its reputation as a dog, and Novell hasn't taken over the world. You have to assume Active Directory is going to do pretty well.”
“Linux has been somewhat suspect in performance compared to NT 4.0, and if Windows 2000 raises the bar, it raises the bar above where Linux is competing. On the other hand, there's no stopping Linux being the key alternative to Windows 2000 for as far as we can see.”
“Even if an application isn't tuned and tweaked to take advantage of Windows 2000, it should in theory run faster on Windows 2000 and be more reliable on a more reliable platform. For a lot of companies, that'll be enough to swap out NT and go to Windows 2000.”
“Telcos and network service providers, ASPs and ISPs, have all been growing as important players in the distribution of software functionality. With Windows 2000, Microsoft clearly thinks it has a much better horse to ride into battle to get these folks as customers. They will emphasize the new ASP channel as one they are especially targeting in that regard. They need a platform that actually runs 24 hours a day, and on bigger hardware configurations.”
“They are on the cusp of bigger demand for Windows 2000, and actually now applications are rolling out that exploit Active Directory. They've gone through the Windows 2000 certification process -- I think 150 applications have gone through that, and 70 to 80 are server apps. The picture certainly is a lot more promising than it was a year ago.”
“Alpha is the sole survivor of the various RISC implementations, and Microsoft has been getting some mileage out of having [Windows NT] on that platform.”
“Alpha as a platform has been very much a niche product anyway, and tended to be a high-end niche product [which is an area] where NT has not been particularly strong anyway. With Windows 2000 around the corner, you would think there might be something of a surge in interest of that system on Alpha.”
“This makes me wonder about the prognosis for Alpha. At Compaq there has been major management shakeups, and this could be something that's fallen by the wayside. It's a very expensive venture and maybe hasn't generated the kind of return Compaq would like to see on it.”
“It's a bit ludicrous of anybody to predict the effect of such a break-up on the industry and say with any certainty whether it would be positive or negative,”
