Companies also want to integrate Windows 2000 with legacy systems. "When you want to surface your business processes out on the Internet, you need to make it easy for people," says Cameron Cosgrove, director of information services at Pacific Life Insurance Co., a $2.8 billion financial services company in Newport Beach, Calif. The company's life-insurance division is developing a Web application so customers can calculate performance statistics for 32 funds across 12 portfolios of investments, drawing on 10 years' worth of daily values. The data is buried in a mainframe, and business rules are scattered through disparate databases.

So far, Microsoft Consulting Services has been Pacific Life's best information source. "Integrators are learning it just like we are," Cosgrove says. "I'd venture to say, given how aggressive we are, we're probably ahead of some in our knowledge."

Microsoft recently said pricing for Windows 2000 won't differ from the list prices of comparable Windows NT packages, but there will be costs associated with moving to the software. Market research firm Giga Information Group estimates upgrading to Windows 2000 Professional will cost businesses between $970 and $1,640 per desktop, including hardware, installation, and training. Windows 2000 Server will cost $107 per client on a network of 5,000 users, Giga predicts.

IT executives say they expect to pay up front for Windows 2000 software upgrades, as well as any necessary consulting, and reap savings down the road from lower administrative costs. The most bullish scenario painted by integrators: Companies could lower total cost of ownership by 20% or 25% within a year. But some IT managers say they're not building any cost savings into their budgets next year. They hope to achieve lower management and support costs after introducing applications such as Exchange 2000 that benefit from the new platform.

The National Association of Securities Dealers, for example, plans to begin rolling out Windows 2000 and Office 2000 on its 5,000 desktops and laptops during the third quarter of next year. While the organization won't disclose its budget, CIO Bailar says the migration costs are "very similar" to its last upgrade, to NT 4.0. "Last time, we created the whole process and upgraded 3,000 machines, maximum. Now we're almost doubling that, so it's costing less money in my mind to migrate more users."

Windows 2000 clearly isn't a panacea for all that ails NT users. Microsoft still needs to demonstrate cost reductions over an extended period, and the high-end DataCenter package won't ship until the middle of next year. But when it comes to service and support, Microsoft appears to be making headway. Craig Muirhead, service support specialist for Telus, a telecommunications company in Burnaby, British Columbia, recently spent a week at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., campus with his staff and Microsoft engineers testing a mocked-up environment on Windows 2000.

"In the past, the perception has been that if you upgrade to a Microsoft product, it's not what you'd consider prime time. Companies had a lot of trouble, and there wasn't a lot of support for them to get back to where they were," says Muirhead. "With Windows 2000, Microsoft has been with us every step of the way."

That's a ray of hope for every IT manager involved in a Windows 2000 rollout to hang on to. If Microsoft and its partners can extend that level of support to all customers, there should be no problems. But that's a big if.

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llustration by Robin Jareaux
Photo of Cosgrove by Ed Carreon