InformationWeek

For companies with large numbers of mobile users, the IntelliMirror feature, which lets administrators keep track of and re-create each user's environment, whether they're online or offline, has the potential to be invaluable. No matter where a user is, the system will provide the user's common profile. IntelliMirror works in concert with the Synchronization Manager, letting systems administrators access changes as soon as users have reconnected to the network and synchronized their settings.

Although many companies are looking forward to the convenience this feature provides, there are obstacles for many, at least in the short term. Companies such as Eastman Chemical, Motorola, and others are phasing in their Windows 2000 implementations, starting with notebooks or desktops, then moving to servers, so they won't immediately have the full Windows 2000 environment, including Active Directory, that's necessary to support IntelliMirror. For example, Motorola won't upgrade its domain control servers to Windows 2000 in order to use Active Directory until later this year.

PeopleSoft doesn't plan to use IntelliMirror at all, because its mobile users connect over 56-Kbps modems. "IntelliMirror is a great idea, but not very practical in a low-bandwidth environment," Wimmer says.

But other management features already have proven to be very useful. The Windows Management Instrumentation has been included as part of the operating system for the first time, and Motorola's IT staff is using it to connect to PCs remotely, do remote installs, view information, and look for device conflicts on a notebook--capabilities Enfield says are very powerful. Windows Management Instrumentation "allows us to detect the manufacturer and model of the machine after the system image has been applied, so we can add scripts to it. That way, we can install any other applications required [for that particular device], like the ThinkPad configuration utilities," Enfield says.

Getting users up to speed on Windows 2000 isn't that hard a task, IT managers say. Since the user interface is similar to that of Windows 98, most of them have an easy time moving to Windows 2000.

They simply must be shown how to use hibernate and standby, dock without rebooting, and make use of offline folders. IT departments can help. For example, the IT staff at Mellon Financial is developing a users guide covering the new functionality of the operating system and detailing the changes between NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 that affect users.

The learning curve for support staff can actually be the bigger obstacle. The method of troubleshooting Windows 2000 is vastly different from Windows 95/98 and somewhat different from NT 4.0. "We're getting error logs we never had to deal with before, and it takes time before we remember to check the error log first. It's a mind-set change" to go from administering Windows 95 to Windows 2000, Eastman's Evans says.

IT professionals also are working through issues of application portability before launching a full-scale rollout of the new operating system. Just because an application works well in the Windows 95, 98, and NT environments doesn't mean it will work well under Windows 2000. The chance of application-portability problems increases for custom-written apps, says Joe Clabby, VP of platforms and services at the Aberdeen Group consulting firm.

Microsoft's Goldstein recommends testing every application on every configuration of notebook used throughout the company. But even Goldstein says some applications simply may not work under Windows 2000. He says applications being ported from a Windows NT 4.0 environment have a higher degree of compatibility with Windows 2000 than those from Windows 95 and 98 environments.

Though Motorola's pilot has largely been a success, there have been some chinks in the armor. Passport MVP, a secure virtual private network application from Nortel Networks Corp. that lets remote Motorola users access the company's network over the Internet, doesn't work well with Windows 2000. Instead of connecting through an Internet service provider, Windows 2000 users have had to dial directly into Motorola. The only way to fix the problem, Enfield says, is to strongly encourage Nortel to release a new Windows 2000-compatible version. Other applications, such as the engineering tool ClearCase from Rational Software Corp., don't work at all with Windows 2000 on desktop or notebook computers, Enfield says. To make that particular tool work, Motorola would have to upgrade the server, too--something it has not yet done. To get around the problem, Enfield and his team have decided not to upgrade to Windows 2000 those systems using ClearCase.

So far, none of the 700 applications Eastman Chemical has tested for Windows 2000 compatibility has been a "showstopper," Evans says. "And we're checking everything from our SAP R/3 graphical user interface and sales applications down to information warehouses and spreadsheets." But Eastman plans to replace any application used for personal productivity that does not work under Windows 2000.

And not all hardware vendors have updated their drivers to support Windows 2000. "If you're using Vendor A's PCMCIA card and they don't have a Windows 2000 driver, you either have to dump them and switch to a vendor that does, or they have to come up with a driver," says PeopleSoft's Wimmer. She adds, though, that it's a short-term problem as all hardware manufacturers are expected to make the appropriate Windows 2000 drivers available.

But despite these glitches, largely the result of any massive technology shift, proponents say companies seem eager to move to Windows 2000. Costs of upgrading notebooks to Windows 2000 vary widely, depending on application portability and other issues, but most companies say the hard costs--about two hours of labor plus any BIOS or driver upgrades needed--amount to about $150 to $250 per notebook. Those costs are minuscule when you consider that the increased reliability and stability of the new operating system should translate into notebooks that require less service and users who experience less downtime, Enfield says. East-man Chemical's Evans, in fact, says she views the upgrades as a net zero in terms of cost, with substantial gains to the user.

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