Windows 2000 Makes Its Debut

By Sushuma February 18, 2000 10:33 AM

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(InternetWeek)-Microsoft yesterday put in its biggest bid yet to become a supplier of e-business platforms, with the long-awaited launch and general shipment of the Windows 2000 operating system.?At an extravaganza dominated by Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates, who was joined by actor Patrick Stewart of Star Trek and singer Carlos Santana, the company claimed new benchmarks which show that Windows 2000 outperforms even the largest Unix systems.?Specifically, the company pointed to transaction performance of 227,079 tpmCs for Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 running on a cluster of 12 eight-processor Compaq ProLiant servers, using Transaction Processing Council (TPC) benchmarks, compared to 135,815 on a single IBM's 24-processor RS 6000 Enterprise S80 system.?From a price performance perspective, the Compaq systems running Windows 2000 cost $4.3 million vs.?7.2 million for the IBM configuration.?"This opens the door for replacement of Unix systems handling these workloads," said analyst Dwight Davis, of Summit Strategies.?He pointed out that organizations will need Windows 2000 Data Center Edition, which ships in June.?However, industry analyst Tony Iams, of D.H.?Brown Associates, said the benchmark is not typical because it involved an application optimized for a multiprocessor cluster, therefore it would not apply to all to all types of workloads.?Nevertheless he said the price performance Microsoft has achieved with Windows 2000 is impressive.?"Microsoft hit all the right buttons, there have been a lot of questions about the value of Windows 2000," he said.?More ...

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