News in View: Industry experts on Win2000

As with every big offering from Microsoft, Windows 2000 has hit the shelves in a storm of media attention. In this week's News In View special, we asked a range of industry experts to give their verdict.

Three reasons attracted John Saville, IT director of the University of the West of England, to the latest Microsoft system: scalability, remote systems administration and Windows 2000's installer technologies.

Adam Jollans, marketing manager for IBM, also thought that Windows 2000's scalability was one of its greatest assets. "Windows 2000 is quite a bit more scalable than Windows NT was before," he said. "The advanced server supports eight way SMP and the data centre server coming out later this year will support 32-way SMP."

However, Windows 2000 has stiff competition. Pointing out a recent survey revealing Linux to be the fastest growing operating system for servers, Jollans said: "With 25 per cent of the server market, Linux is growing faster than Windows 2000."

With a note of warning, Amir Hudda, managing director of Entevo, thought the new programmes might pose some teething problems for new users, many of who may not have had experience using directories on an NT platform. "Deploying managing and migrating are all issues relating to the fact that there is going to be an active directory and that's something a lot of people are not going to have a lot of experience with," he said.

You can watch the full News in View special in our Group/Middleware Channel (http://www.silicon.com/a36026 )