Windows shops: Start preparing for .Net
In case you haven't noticed, Microsoft Corp. has been flooding the market with previews of its new offerings. Product breakouts in the past few months include Office 10, Windows Whistler, Exchange Server 2000, Datacenter Server, Host Integration Server, Internet Security and Acceleration Server, Application Center 2000, BizTalk Server 2000, Commerce Server 2000, the .Net SDK (software development kit), Visual Studio.Net, and the C# (pronounced "C Sharp") programming language.
Everybody loves a party, but there's one big problem with this massive rollout: How does corporate IT make sense of all these overlapping announcements, previews, and beta tests? It's obvious that Microsoft is encouraging a change of direction. IT needs to figure out where Microsoft is going and decide whether it wants to come along.
Developers rule
The last energizing jolt that Microsoft handed to the Windows developer community was the pairing of Windows NT 4 and Visual Studio 6. That was five years ago, an eternity in technology years.
Developers are the chief beneficiaries of new Microsoft technologies. All the fuss over .Net and Visual Studio.Net confuses some nontechnical people, who often make the mistake of seeing these as vague statements of mission, mere demonstrations of technology that might play a role in Windows' future. In fact, .Net and Visual Studio.Net are real, working products, intentionally targeted at Microsoft's neglected audience: developers.
Microsoft hit that target with a sniper's accuracy. The beta release of the Visual Studio.Net IDE (integrated development environment) crystallized elements of the .Net platform. It solidified in particular the C# programming language, a standards-based C++ dialect that delivers most of Java's benefits without Java's learning curve or license restrictions. Developers are snapping up free 120-day evaluation copies of Windows 2000 and SQL Server 2000, just so they can explore C# and .Net. Microsoft is keeping the heat on by having high-level Microsoft staffers, instead of the usual non-Microsoft moderators, involved in .Net online discussions. Those discussions are active and often contentious, a very good sign where technology is concerned.
Scaling up
The centralized computing movement took hold faster than Microsoft expected. While large companies are moving to monolithic Unix servers with dozens or hundreds of processors, Windows has been unable to compete. You scale Windows by adding more servers, something that modern-day IT managers want to avoid. Microsoft's clustering and load-balancing technologies are fairly mature, enough so that Web farms of Windows servers are commonplace. Still, Windows needs in-the-box scalability.
Windows' key limitation is not software, but Intel's rather tired 32-bit architecture. Some PC server vendors have managed to squeeze eight Intel CPUs into one cabinet, but dual-and quad-CPU servers remain the norm. To go beyond that, Microsoft is counting on Intel's 64-bit architecture, dubbed IA-64. It's worth noting that AMD, which ignited the performance PC market with its Athlon 32-bit CPUs, is working on a competing 64-bit architecture for Windows. Users will get an immediate boost from the move to 64-bit processors, but faster, wider Intel and Intel-compatible CPUs will be severely hampered by antiquated I/O bus technologies.
Massive multiprocessor Unix systems move data among processors and
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