Microsoft Monday released the much-anticipated Service Pack 1 for Windows 2000, which could help trigger a new round of corporate adoption of the operating system.
Many analysts and systems integrators have been advising enterprise customers to wait until the release of SP1 before beginning corporate deployments.
With SP1 available, enterprise users may use it as the springboard to take their pilots from the lab to the corporate network.
"Users are telling us they are waiting for three things before they launch their Windows 2000 deployment," says Al Gillen, an analyst with IDC. "They're waiting to see how deployments go within other companies, they're waiting for Service Pack 1, and they are waiting for their own upgrade cycles. Many need to map all those together before they can begin to roll out Windows 2000."
The Service Pack works with all three Win 2000 versions currently available: Professional desktop, Server and Advanced Server. The high-end DataCenter version has been delayed, but Microsoft says it will ship in mid-August.
SP1, which is available for download from Microsoft's Web site, is a collection of bug fixes and does not add any new features to Win 2000.
"We heard loud and clear from customers that they do not want new features," says Mark Perry, director of product marketing for Windows servers.
Perry says SP1 focuses on four areas: reliability, application and hardware compatibility, improved installation and re-installation procedures, and security.
It also contains 28 bug fixes for Active Directory, including synchronization of domain controllers, Domain Name System updates, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol support and global catalogs.
The other bug fixes focus on e-mail, networking, management and administration, and printing.
Despite all the fixes, Perry confirmed SP1 causes problems with two firewalls: ZoneAlarm from Zone Labs and Network Ice's BlackICE products.
"We are working with those vendors on specific issues and hope to have more on that in the next few days," Perry says.
SP1 is available in two versions, the Express Installation, which only adds needed components, and the Network Installation version, which is targeted at enterprises and contains all the bug fixes. The Network Installation is 87M bytes. SP1 also is available on CD-ROM, but it takes four to six weeks for shipment.
Service Pack 1 can be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/ downloads/recommended/sp1/x86Lang.asp
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