The issues in Gartner's article, "Whistler servers: What the Windows sequel has to offer", continue to underscore Microsoft?s rush to release Windows 2000. W2K came to us without many of the necessary tools to effectively manage and deploy it. Granted, W2K is more stable than Windows-NT in large installations, and some of the management tools are beginning to become available in subsequent releases of the W2K Resource Kit. Even so, at this time I choose to ?just say no? to W2K.
The release of Whistler, coming a relatively short two years after W2K, has the significant effect of making Windows-NT the ?current minus two? version of Microsoft?s operating system offerings. As was recently seen with Win-95, this will mean the end of bug fixes for NT. While NT has become pretty stable with SP3 and the later service packs, this is something of a concern.
The cost of deploying W2K still outweighs this small concern over NT. A few years ago Microsoft was taken to task for publishing releases of the Office suite too frequently, pushing customers into spending money for rollouts and upgrades that they weren?t ready for. The same now appears to be happening in the OS arena. Of course, Microsoft?s cash flow is improved by more frequent releases, so this shouldn?t come as a surprise.
With these issues in mind, I disagree with Gartner?s recommendation not to wait for Whistler. Waiting until Whistler is released has several advantages. It gives our regular hardware replacement cycle more time to catch up with the additional requirements for W2K. It avoids the direct cost of paying for two versions of the operating system. It allows us to eliminate one costly rollout cycle. Finally, when we do deploy Whistler, we?re more likely to have the administration tools to facilitate the transition.
