“Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates acknowledged Wednesday
that Microsoft must improve its application server technologies
within Windows NT Server and the forthcoming upgrade, Windows
2000.
In mid-2000 — by which time Microsoft hopes
corporations will be moving to Windows 2000 — the company will
release a package called AppCenter Server, Gates said…
The package will offer simpler administration, unlimited
clustering capacity and ‘bullet-proof’ fault tolerance, said
Gates and product manager Garth Fort.”
“While competitors have released specific application server
products, the ‘application server’ in Windows 2000 relies on
technologies in the operating system, mainly COM+ (Component Object
Model) and Microsoft Transaction Server. Fort demonstrated
AppCenter Server for the developers, intentionally crashing a
server so others in the farm would pick up the load. The technology
identified its problem, a memory leak, and fixed it. Fort also
added a new server to the farm, and the extensions replicated
server settings on the system automatically.”
“Gates reiterated the company’s high hopes for Windows 2000,
dusting off his ‘we’re betting the company on Windows 2000’
assertion and calling it ‘the largest investment Microsoft has ever
made.’ He promised the system would be reliable, based on the fact
that some 500,000 testers are putting the beta of the product
though its paces.”