NEW YORK, June 27, 2000 — Microsoft Corp. today announced reaching several milestones with the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 product line — achievements that reflect momentous customer and industry support for the platform. Sales of the Windows 2000 operating system license are expected to exceed 3 million by June 30. The company exceeded its goal of obtaining at least 100 “Certified for Windows” applications while training more than 266,000 IT professionals on the platform to date. The expected summer release of Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 (SP1) remains on target, and is expected to further drive deployment of the business platform.
Shipments of Windows 2000 Strong
Sales momentum of the Windows 2000 platform remains strong. In addition, PC manufacturers including Compaq Computer Corp., Dell Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp.,Toshiba America Inc., Sony Corp., NEC Corp. and Gateway Inc. have reinforced their commitment to the platform by recently offering systems preloaded with Windows 2000 that enable users to take full advantage of the platform’s functionality.
“Windows 2000 has been extremely well received by the industry in terms of customer sales figures and phenomenal support from leading OEMs,” said John Frederiksen, general manager, PC Experience Group at Microsoft. “Moreover, we are consistently hearing from mobile users that it is the platform’s reliability, ease of use and friendliness that make it so appealing. We’re delighted that we are able to bring that degree of value and functionality to customers.”
Many of the customers who cite these benefits as key decision motivators are rolling out large-scale implementations of Windows 2000, including Barclays Global, Dorsey-Whitney, Homelife, LCM International, Motorola, the Oklahoma State Supreme Court, Robert Half International, Rainier Technology Inc., San Francisco International Airport and Warner Bros. TELUS Corp., a telecommunications company based in Western Canada, recently migrated 14,000 users to the Windows 2000 Active Directory™
service, while simultaneously deploying over 5,000 desktops with Windows 2000 Professional.
“The key motivating factor behind our decision to implement Windows 2000 is our strong commitment to TELUS’ customers to provide the best services possible. To do this, we needed to deploy the most advanced technology available and were impressed with the reliability of Windows 2000,” said Arthur Tymos, vice president and chief information officer of Burnaby BC-based TELUS, the largest initial deployer of Windows 2000 Professional.
Number of Third-Party Applications Continues to Grow
Windows 2000 has experienced unprecedented third-party support, adding another 500 applications each month to the thousands of compatible applications currently available. Compatible applications are those that run on the operating system and are supported by the independent software vendor.
In addition, more than 100 applications have been “Certified for Windows” by the independent testing agency VeriTest. Utilizing a new comprehensive test plan designed by Microsoft and leading application-testing experts, the “Certified for Windows” program is considered the most rigorous certification process in the industry. In spite of the high expectations, demand for certification testing at VeriTest labs worldwide remains strong, with more than 300 applications currently undergoing the review process. Upon completing the review and certification process, the applications will be deemed optimized to fully exploit the new features of Windows 2000, providing customers with significant cost savings, improved manageability and higher reliability.
“We are seeing tremendous demand from software vendors worldwide because their customers are asking for certified applications,” said Marc Zasada, vice president of IT Product Certification Programs at VeriTest, a service of Lionbridge Technologies. “At VeriTest, we are committed to vigorous and thorough testing; these applications have passed a high hurdle and customers can be sure they are reliable, manageable, secure and take full advantage of Windows 2000 technology.”
Demand for Windows 2000 Training Programs Exceeds Anticipated Need
As more businesses deploy Windows 2000, demand for IT professionals trained on the platform continues to rise. To date, more than a quarter-million Microsoft customers and industry partners worldwide have been trained on Windows 2000 through Microsoft’s $40 million investment in training initiative, exceeding the original goal by more than two-thirds. The demand has been so great that Microsoft is offering an additional set of summer sessions on Windows 2000 Active Directory. Session details can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/trainingandservices/default.asp?PageId=training & LearnCenterHtm=exchange2000 .
Many of Microsoft’s providers, including Microsoft Certified Solution Providers and value added providers, have experienced the benefits of and customer demand for the business platform firsthand.
“We decided to deploy Windows 2000 internally immediately after launch,” said Lucas Costa, director of Infrastructure Practice at IntelliNet Technologies Inc. “Not only is the technology cutting edge, but it provides us with the ability to lower our cost of administration. As a professional services company that offers Windows 2000-based solutions, we wanted to ensure that our internal IT professionals were trained on the platform and that the new functionality was available to all employees. We currently have over 20 trained professionals who can most effectively assist our customers in architecting and deploying Windows 2000, many of whom are working toward their MCSE certification for Windows 2000 and taking the exams now. With the strong customer demand for Windows 2000 that we’re seeing, we plan to increase the number of trained professionals significantly.”
Microsoft Prepares for Upcoming Release of SP1
Following comprehensive beta evaluation and feedback from a select group of Microsoft premier support customers, original equipment manufacturers, independent hardware vendors, independent software vendors and subscribers to the MSDN™
developer program, release of Windows 2000 SP1 remains on target for this summer. In accordance with expectations set at the launch of Windows 2000, the service pack will be a rigorously-tested collection of updates that addresses customer-reported concerns with the Windows 2000 operating system. SP1 continues to enhance the overall reliability of Windows 2000 and features easier and more robust mechanisms for applying Service Packs to Windows.
SP1 is an integral component of Microsoft’s commitment to providing customers with the most up-to-date and comprehensive software solutions available. “Microsoft is committed to delivering products, including Service Pack updates, of the highest quality,” Frederikson said. “SP1 will be yet another major milestone for customers of Windows 2000. We have seen across-the-board adoption among organizations that have plans to and/or are now deploying Windows 2000, and we expect that during the remainder of this calendar year and in 2001, Windows 2000 growth on the business PC will continue to accelerate.”
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Support for Microsoft Windows 2000
“The large-scale deployments of Windows 2000 Professional at customers such as Motorola (5,000 desktops), TELUS (7,000 desktops) and Robert Half International (6,500 desktops) bears testament to the momentum behind Windows 2000 Professional.”
Noury Bernard-Hasan, Group Product Manager for Windows 2000 Microsoft Corp.
“All of our infrastructure services are on Windows 2000 today, from the smallest workstation to the largest enterprise server. Windows 2000 enabled us to consolidate 35 Windows NT 4.0 domains into a single domain.”
Kevin King, MIS Director, Oklahoma State Supreme Court
“We have been very impressed with the tools available to simplify the deployment process as well as the significant business value and cost savings that our clients are seeing. We spent the majority of the time up-front architecting the right solution for this client’s environment, which made the deployment process painless.”
Scott MacDonald, Principal Consultant Rainier Technology Inc.
“The MultiLanguage Version enabled us to deploy a single version of Windows 2000 Professional companywide. This eliminates the costs associated with deploying different language versions, testing applications separately or creating multiple installation scripts, etc. Net-net, this means reduction in total cost of ownership.”
Michel Heylens, Chief Technical Architect LCM International
“Contrary to some popular opinions, we experienced no major issues with application compatibility with Windows 2000.”
Sean Sharifian, Director of Personal Computing Services Warner Bros, a division of Time Warner
