InformationWeek

February 8, 1999

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We Want Windows

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Windows Windows 2000

Planet IT Windows 2000: Bringing Management Into The OS

In fact, while the new InformationWeek Research data indicate that businesses growing at a stronger clip than their established competitors are much more likely to risk putting vital business processes on new technologies, Giga's Enderle says that may be just so much posturing.

It's also unclear whether the penchant for taking risks is a trait that helps such emerging enterprises grow--or a symptom of the need to try almost anything to keep up.

"Emerging enterprises have a high affinity for new technology, and they'll talk a blue streak about early adoption--but when it actually comes to deploying it, they hang back," says Enderle. "These guys are running really hard, and they are critically understaffed." So while they talk big, he says, emerging enterprises often lack both the people and the budgets to deploy new technologies as quickly as they would like.

Other emerging enterprises are skeptical of what Windows 2000 will really do for them. At least that's how it plays in Peoria. It will be "at least a year" after Windows 2000 ships before Dee Thompson, MIS director for Heartcare Midwest SC in that Illinois city, will consider installing it, she says. The private company of 25 cardiologists has four locations, 190 employees, and 18 outlying clinics. Thompson is concerned about flexibility, security, maintenance, and upgrade costs, particularly because the company already has a Novell NetWare-based network backbone.

Still, like most emerging enterprises, the company's stance is to follow close behind the leading edge of new information technologies. Says Thompson: "I'm not 100% sure what Windows 2000 will do for us, but my company isn't one to lag behind in software or technology."

Other companies are waiting to reach the point of need, rather than want. "Windows 2000 on the desktop ultimately is the right way to go, because of stability and resiliency, but there's no pressing business need right now," says Gadzooks' Gruehn. "What I have now works. I can run Office 2000 [which will ship in April] without having Windows 2000. It's a difficult business justification."

Indeed, many IT managers will wait at least until the first service pack is released before jumping in with both feet on the server and desktop versions. Antelope Valley Healthcare's Shehata is one. "Four months ago, I would say we were bleeding-edge," he says, "but after playing with it in our lab, I say let other people bleed before me."

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Ditto for Russell Holloway, IS manager at Cullman Electric Cooperative, a utility in Cullman, Ala. Cullman Electric's customer base for its electricity service is growing by about 5% a year. But the company is expanding into other municipal services, including cable TV, sanitation, and fire protection, as well as performing billing services for area water utilities. Revenue from these businesses is doubling every two years, Holloway says. "We'll probably adopt Windows 2000 Professional sometime in the next two years, but we're not interested in more features," says Holloway. "System lockups are one of our biggest problems, and we'd actually prefer fewer features and more stability. If Windows 2000 proves to be more stable, we'll move to it even if it requires more system resources. If it's any less stable, we're not interested."

All businesses say the most important criteria by which they will evaluate both desktop and server versions of Windows 2000 will be whether it's more stable and reliable than NT 4.0. But when it comes to the server, emerging enterprises rank ease of administration before security and performance, while performance ranks before security and ease of administration for businesses overall. Microsoft officials say they've heard the same things from the two constituencies.

And some IT managers at all sizes of businesses, including emerging enterprises, aren't convinced that Windows 2000 is an inevitability. "I'm more happy with Unix," says Ken Young, engineering manager at Orent Graphics Inc., a graphics production shop in Omaha, Neb. Windows NT's abilities as a database server or file server platform "leave something to be desired," says Young, adding that tests with Linux have shown it to be 40% to 50% faster than NT on comparable hardware. He says he might use Linux to replace NT, at least on the server for databases.

But Young admits that while he doesn't foresee ever using NT for serious back-office chores, he'll likely upgrade the company's NT server to Windows 2000 at some point to continue serving the few NT desktops the company uses to run accounting and sales-force automation applications.

Only time will tell whether emerging enterprises will act on their aggressive plans to snap up Windows 2000 more rapidly than their bigger enterprise cousins. But with the release of Windows 2000 six months or more away, there's still time to ponder that question. Some have already made up their minds.

"I get tickled with all of these people saying, 'Don't do it--don't waste your money,'" says Snapper's Jones. "We're saying, 'Bring it on.'"