Windows 2000 Server Sees Rapid Internet Adoption

REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 9, 2000 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server operating system has seen rapid adoption among Web sites. According to Netcraft’s recent Web Server Survey, the Windows server platform is the leading platform for Web sites among Fortune 500 companies. The survey also revealed that the Windows server platform powers more secure e-commerce sites than any other operating system. In addition, the survey highlighted strong customer satisfaction in the Windows server platform, noting that customers of Windows are less likely to switch to other operating systems.

“Today’s announcement demonstrates the incredible momentum already building before the general availability of Windows 2000,”
said Deborah Willingham, vice president, Business Enterprise Division, Microsoft.
“We’re excited to deliver a comprehensive platform for our customers who need scalable, reliable and secure computing for their Internet solutions.”

The Netcraft survey revealed that the number of sites running Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2000 Advanced Server has more than doubled in less than three months, even though general availability is not scheduled until Feb. 17. The survey also showed that 45 percent of all e-commerce sites using secure sockets layer (SSL) are Windows-based, exceeding competitive offerings such as Linux and Sun Solaris, which had 16 percent and 14 percent, respectively. Additional data from Netcraft also showed that 39 percent of Fortune 500 companies have chosen the Windows server platform for their Internet requirements compared with 37 percent for Sun and 2 percent for Linux. Netcraft’s survey also noted that the Windows server platform leads in customer satisfaction, with a 70 percent retention rate, the highest of any operating system.

In addition to usage by Internet sites, the Windows server platform has also seen strong success in other usage scenarios, such as internal corporate deployments. Survey.com, an independent research firm, recently polled 2,242 companies and found that the Windows server platform accounted for 54 percent of the servers in these companies, compared to 20 percent for UNIX and 6 percent for Linux and FreeBSD.

Large Organizations Are Choosing Windows 2000 Today

Many large organizations, including Barnesandnoble.com Inc., CenterBeam Inc., Data Return Corp., DIGEX Inc., InfoSpace Inc., MSNBC and Monster.com, have already migrated their sites to Windows 2000 and have seen significant improvements in performance and reliability.

Pandesic LLC, the largest e-commerce ASP, migrated Pandesic-powered thestore.adidas.com, hifi.com and others to Windows 2000 this month.

“Pandesic provides mission-critical e-commerce infrastructure to over 100 e-businesses,”
said Harold Hughes, CEO of Pandesic, the Internet company from Intel and SAP.
“Windows 2000 enhances our standard platform by making it more scalable, more reliable and – most important – more profitable.”

“As the most popular news site on the Web, MSNBC.com handles nearly 1.5 million unique users every day. When news breaks, that number can peak to nearly 2.5 million people. It’s imperative we have a rock solid operating system that can scale. We’ve gotten that with Windows 2000,”
said John Nicol, MSNBC.com general manager.
“The switch from Windows NT® 4.0 to Windows 2000 has actually doubled our capacity – we can now service 12 percent more customers per day with a three server cluster running Windows 2000 than we could with a six server cluster running Windows NT 4.0. Windows 2000 not only significantly improved the MSNBC.com customer experience, it’s doubled our serving capacity without expenditure, affording the growth and headroom every site wants for its business.”

Customers are also switching from other operating systems to the Windows platform. seeUthere.com, an Internet startup focused on event management, recently switched from Linux to the Windows server platform.

“We switched to Windows because it provided a rich development environment and enabled us to build a scalable, reliable service,”
said Ray Thackeray, co-founder and vice president of Products and Customer Service at seeUthere.com.
“On the Internet, time is everything and the Windows server platform and tools allowed us to develop Web applications more quickly than we could with Linux.”

About Windows 2000

Windows 2000 will enable the next generation of PC computing by providing customers with the easy way to Internet-enable their business using the integrated Web application services, increased scalability and industry-standard security. Windows 2000 will provide a more reliable platform designed for increased system uptime and a more manageable operating system to lower desktop management costs and will offer more centralized management for servers. In addition, Windows 2000 will enable knowledge workers to take advantage of new devices. More information on Windows 2000 and how it compares to competitive offerings can be found at http://www.dot-truth.com/ beginning Feb. 17.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software – any time, any place and on any device.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft® Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ on Microsoft’s corporate information pages.

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