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Daily news podcastMicrosoft is seeking advice from its UK customers on how to make its forthcoming Windows 2000 Datacentre Server platform a credible alternative to Unix in mission critical environments.
The software giant is taking advice from its year-old Data Centre Advisory Council (DCAC), a talkshop for users that includes Marks and Spencer, EDS and NatWest.
Microsoft claims the Datacentre Server operating system will replace Unix because it is cheaper and allows users to standardise on one platform. But users have always been concerned about whether Microsoft products can scale, are easy to use and reliable.
Allan Dorman, system engineering manager at Microsoft, said: "Users are looking to simplify and reduce the number of working parts they have. In the short and medium term Datacentre Server will be a replacement to Unix."
Windows 2000 Datacentre Server runs on large servers and is aimed at demanding line-of-business and ecommerce environments. It offers all the features found in Windows 2000 Advanced Server and includes 64Gb of memory and support for 32 processors. It also claims to provide reliability features such as four-node clustering and process control.
Council member Mori Tehrani, head of European IT infrastructure at Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), said users need high performance and reliability if they want to use Windows 2000 for critical applications.
"Microsoft is taking the next jump from file and print to critical apps and that takes a lot of faith from users," said Tenrani. He said Microsoft was showing a willingness to listen to users about what they considered important, rather than what its software developers wanted to do.
CSFB has 15000 users and 2000 NT servers globally and intends to rollout Windows 2000 to the desktop this autumn. It also uses IBM MVS mainframes and Sun Microsystems E10000 and Ultra servers. Tehrani said it would consider moving 'middle-tier' applications to Datacenter Server if key concerns, particularly surrounding manageability, are satisfied.
"We developed our own in-house software, called Server Health Checking Index, for monitoring NT systems due to the lack of functionality in Microsoft's software," said Tenrani. Microsoft will incorporate SCHI in Datacentre Server. "Our participation has helped shape the product. There aren't many vendors who consult like this, for example Ford just sells cars using clever advertising," he added.
"Manageability continues to be a challenge for Microsoft and we don't have the best answers today," said Brian Ball, general manager of enterprise server products at Microsoft. He said Redmond was working towards providing seven nines availability for its telecoms customers with Datacentre Server.
Microsoft's Dorman said the feedback has helped the software giant focus on features that are important to users such as manageability, hardware and software partitioning, and clustering.
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