Windows 2000 has slowly taken the field to defend Microsoft's LAN server dynasty, but Linux is making a series of it. Sooner, rather than later, you're going to run into customers who want both. And it will be up to you to turn a double play.
Don't think your NetWare and NT customers are ready to send Windows 2000 or Linux up to the plate? Think again. While concerns about Windows 2000 system requirements (and Win2000 Active Directory's (AD) stability and Linux's perceived immaturity) still exist in CIOs' minds, both operating systems are gaining corporate fans.
This is also because both OSes have made major improvements. Windows 2000 was first with its July 2000 release of SP1. Corporate buyers were assured that Win2000 had passed through the infamous version 1.0 teething phase. Toward the end of 2000, the operating system also gained some much needed server-level applications with Exchange and SQL Server 2000 in the fall.
On the Linux side, the long-awaited release of 2.4 in January 2001 gave Linux the journaling file system (JFS), logical volume management (LVM) and large memory-handling abilities that buyers wanted to see from an enterprise-level server.
Together, Windows 2000 and NT commanded 41 percent of all server OS shipments in 2000. Al Gillen, manager of International Data Corporation's system software research, predicts that Windows 2000 will represent almost 71 percent of Microsoft's server OS shipments by 2001's end.
Microsoft won't pitch a perfect game, though. In a report, Laura DiDio, an analyst for Giga Information Group, states that, "mainstream corporate [Windows 2000] deployments will begin in earnest in midyear, steadily climbing in the third and fourth quarters" but selling Windows 2000 has its own unique Microsoft-driven problems. "The licensing and complexity issues surrounding Windows 2000 deployments are enough of a challenge to thwart even the staunchest Windows organisations," DiDio says. "The looming ship date of Whistler [Now Windows XP]" is causing customers to ask, "whether or not they should delay deployments to Windows 2000 Professional and Server, and wait until after Whistler ships," she adds.
Linux, of course, faces familiar problems of open source: fear, uncertainty and doubtâ€"problems that are in no small part kept alive by Microsoft. Even so, Linux carries a big bat. The OS now controls 26 percent of the server market, second only to Microsoft, according to IDC. Microsoft operating systems still may be the big contender but Linux keeps making a game of it.
