InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
November 2, 1998
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Standard Forms is a case in point. "If they push it back a quarter or a half a year, I don't think it will impact us," says CIO Resh. "I do not see myself trying to deploy it in 1999. Part of it has to do with keeping resources available for year 2000 in case we stumble on something we've missed."
Still, like many other technology executives, Resh is looking forward to the new system finally shipping. Eventually, Resh's goal is to pare Standard Forms' systems down to just two platforms--Windows 2000 and IBM's OS/400.When and how Microsoft customers adopt Windows 2000 partly depends on their IT infrastructures. "It would require hardware and software upgrades, and each one of the dollars we're spending on the desktop is competing with other health-care initiatives," says John Dwight, CIO at Seattle Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center. The hospital's IT staff just finished rolling out NT Workstation 4 and is hoping to skip Windows 2000. "If we could upgrade all of our hardware and software every two years and do the training all at the same time, we'd like that," says Dwight.
Other companies, such as Chevron, have been buying desktop PCs with enough power to run Windows 2000 Professional--Microsoft recommends 64 Mbytes of RAM and a Pentium II processor. On all new servers, Chevron orders a minimum of 256 Mbytes of RAM; on some, it gets 512 Mbytes.
The move to Windows 2000 will come at the expense of other software platforms. About half of evaluators in our survey say Windows 2000 will become the most widely used network operating system at their company within two years of its release. Novell's NetWare will drop from being the most widely deployed server among 36% of Windows 2000 evaluators to 22% two years after Windows 2000's release. The survey shows Unix holding steady at 7%.
Meanwhile, the growing popularity of NT 4 on both servers and workstations is fueling Windows 2000's momentum. Insurance giant Cigna Corp. is about to begin migrating 36,000 desktops and 400 servers from OS/2 to NT 4. The company says it will probably move to Windows 2000, though it will wait until at least the turn of the century before it does. Cigna's reasons for moving to NT include the desire to use more popular packaged software, including Microsoft's Office, Exchange, and Outlook, and to lower costs. The need to be year 2000 compliant is another factor. "Our current platform is problematic, expensive, and lacks a consistent process to manage cost of ownership," says Angelo DeGenaro, senior VP of distributed computing at Cigna. The move to Microsoft's operating system represents Cigna "going back to its roots" of controlling costs, and making technology decisions based on business value, rather than for technology's sake, DeGenaro says.
Apps Count Most
In the long run, it will be applications that drive Windows 2000's adoption. Gates claims there will be 60,000 applications on Windows 2000 when it ships. Half of those already are available on Windows NT, Windows 95, and Windows 98, but the other half will be new, according to Microsoft. In Windows 2000's first 18 months of availability, Gates predicts another 40,000 apps will become available, bringing the total to 100,000.
Many of those will be custom apps built by systems integrators and corporate IT departments. But Microsoft also has a head start on packaged apps for enterprise computing. SAP, PeopleSoft, and Baan are just a few of the companies that have promised to have Windows 2000-compatible software packages by the time the operating system is released, or shortly after.
IBM also plans to get in on the action. The company has built its NT server suite business to nearly $1 billion a year, making it a major supplier of NT software--second only to Microsoft. IBM plans to have Windows 2000-compliant versions of its major server applications, including the DB2 Universal Database and Domino groupware, ready to go when Windows 2000 ships. IBM estimates the market for NT/Windows 2000 hardware, software, and services could exceed $30 billion in 2000.
Same Old Stuff
Among businesses, Windows 2000 will initially be used for the same kinds of applications that have made NT 4 popular. According to InformationWeek Research, 89% of Windows 2000 evaluators say they will use Windows 2000 for messaging, 84% for Internet and intranet site-hosting, and 74% for running groupware applications. Despite Microsoft's rhetoric that Windows 2000 will be the perfect enterprise system, only 49% of Windows 2000 evaluators say they will run ERP systems on it, and only 51% will use it for data mart applications.
So though Windows 2000 will obviously penetrate the enterprise deeper than NT 4 has to date, Unix and mainframes will continue to reign in the upper reaches of the enterprise. "If you set your expectations properly, you won't be let down," the Metropolitan Museum's Tisi says of Windows 2000. "Don't think that it's the enterprise solution for a big corporation, because it's not. The fact is that nothing competes with a mainframe on the high end."
Even Microsoft concedes that point. Speaking at an industry conference last month, Microsoft president Steve Ballmer acknowledged that users will have to wait for future releases of its operating system to get improved clustering, event-management, batch and diagnostic tools, and other high-end system features. "There's still more to do after NT 5," Ballmer said. With eight months or more until Windows 2000 ships, Microsoft has plenty to do in the meantime.
--with additional reporting by Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
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