Windows NT Server Is the Leading Platform for Business on the Web
CHICAGO, April 20, 1998 — Microsoft Corp. today announced new data showing that more organizations use Microsoft® Windows NT® Server with Internet Information Server (IIS) than any other Web server platform for hosting secure Web sites on the Internet.
To conduct business transactions with customers across the Internet and with partners on extranets, organizations need a secure operating system as the foundation. The standard way of protecting these Web transactions on the network is secure sockets layer (SSL). According to Netcraft, a U.K.-based consultant (http://www.netcraft.com/) , in its March Survey of Secure Internet Sites with third-party server certificates, 28 percent of Web sites using SSL are running on Microsoft Windows NT Server with IIS. This compares to 17 percent using the Stronghold version of Apache, 16 percent using Netscape Enterprise Server, and less than 1 percent using IBM Lotus Domino Server. Over the past year, the number of sites using Windows NT Server with IIS for secure Web hosting has grown more than 400 percent.
Secure transactions on the Web using SSL require a trusted digital certificate for the Web server. The leading source for trusted SSL certificates is VeriSign Inc.
“Since the introduction of Internet Information Server 4.0, we’ve seen tremendous growth in Secure Server IDs for IIS,”
said Greg Smirin, director of Internet product marketing at VeriSign.
“Windows NT Server with Internet Information Server is now our leading platform for server certificates.”
Businesses taking advantage of the integrated file, application and security services in Windows NT Server with IIS for online business and e-commerce with Microsoft Site Server Commerce Edition include America West Airlines, Barnes & Noble Inc., Compaq Computer Corp., CompUSA Inc., Continental Airlines Inc., Cox Communications, Dell Computer Corp., Eddie Bauer Inc., General Mills Inc., Merrill Lynch Company Inc., Nautica International Inc., Office Depot Inc., Owens-Corning, Pitney Bowes Inc., Tower Records, Tricon Global Restaurants Inc., Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios and other leading companies.
“We needed a reliable, secure platform for our online store so customers could access it at every hour of the day and feel that their information was protected,”
said Paul Gaffney, senior vice president of IS operations at Office Depot.
“People told us that the only way our store could scale was to do it on UNIX, and they were wrong. We found that only Microsoft has a complete and flexible solution with support that we could rely on.”
Windows NT Server 4.0 makes it easy to publish information and bring business applications to the Web. Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition, currently in beta testing, is a Microsoft BackOffice® family application that enables businesses to build an e-commerce presence on the Web quickly and cost effectively. Internet Information Server 4.0 is part of the Windows NT Option Pack, included with all new Windows NT Server 4.0 packages and available for free download from http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/ (connect-time charges may apply)
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