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The Signature Series
Buzz: The columnists speak
Windows 2000


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Network World Fusion, 09/27/99

The next topic is Windows 2000. Someday I'm sure Microsoft will deliver this. Should anyone care? Is there any reason to implement it right away?

Kearns: To implement it right away? No.

Nolle: I think there's a lot of reasons to not even think about implementing it right away. The big problem associated with any operating system change, no matter what it is, even from Windows 95 to 98, is the concern about software compatibility and the time it's going to take to reinstall the new stuff on a system. I know when we went from Windows 95 to Windows 98, even though we're not a large organization, we encountered a number of little nitpicking problems that made the process anything but completely painless. I can only imagine what it's going to be like to do a more dramatic upgrade. Organizations are going to have to do a pretty careful cost/benefit analysis on what they're going to get out of this process and they're going to have to move carefully on a trial basis to upgrade islands of people who relate a lot to one another until they get a feeling for exactly what the consequences of this are going to be.

Kobielus: Companies are going to have to batten down the hatches first and foremost for Y2K. Once that's behind them, then and only then should they start to consider even a trial rollout of Windows 2000. And before they do that there are some major issues in terms of, for example, deploying Active Directory and redefining the domains around Active Directory.

You take one big infrastructural project at a time. Y2K should be first and foremost. Then, if Windows 2000 makes sense for the company, maybe they're an NT 4.0 customer and they see great need to integrate a general purpose directory into their infrastructure, then and only then should they seriously consider upgrading to something like Windows 2000. But there's a lot of advance planning and design issues that they're going to have to deal with. Implementing it right away that'd be insane. Yes, they need to evaluate it right away but start to implement it probably mid-year 2000 at the earliest.

Kearns: They should put it in their lab in mid-year 2000. Spend six months at least in the lab, playing with Active Directory, learning Active Directory, manipulating Active Directory and maybe around the first of the year 2001, start planning small rollouts.

Nolle: I'm of a mind that Active Directory in and of itself is not going to justify a migration to Windows 2000. What's going to justify it is some new set of applications built around Active Directory that the buyer values enough to pull Active Directory and Windows 2000 through.

Do you expect those applications will evolve?

Nolle: They'll evolve, but in a very specialized way that's not going to impact all users. And the adoption of Windows 2000 is probably going to be not significantly more than the percentage of total Windows desktops than the adoption of NT was.

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