My take is NT 4.0 Goes GA No sooner than 3/97..Long liveMSFT..err.nah!
The VAPOR trail is becoming more and more apparant <grin>....
This can only be goodness for NOVL.
Disagree?
Joe...
=============================================================
Windows NT Server 4.0, Workstation Pushed Back?
By Steven Burke
Chicago
Despite insistence by Microsoft Corp. officials that both Windows NT Server 4.0 and NT Workstation will ship this summer, others inside the company told CRN last week both will likely slip until later in the year.
Microsoft NT Workstation, which will be included on a CD with Internet Explorer 3.0 browser, will not ship until October. NT Server 4.0, will follow one or two months later with the Microsoft Internet Information Server, Microsoft sources said.
Microsoft executives, however, dispute that. "NT is very much on track for shipment this summer, both the server and workstation," said Mike Nash, group product manager for NT Server.
Beta testers last week received beta 2 of NT Server and Workstation, which was expected to be in their hands several weeks earlier. Testers said there were considerable improvements made in drivers and file-system stability.
However, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft still has not fully integrated the Internet Information Server into NT 4.0 Server in the latest beta, sources said. But the company has a common install for both in the latest beta.
One of Microsoft's major goals with NT 4.0 is to integrate the network security and services of NT with the Internet Information Server, providing VARs with an easy-to-set-up and robust Web Server administration platform.
Beta tester Tom Henderson, vice president of engineering for Unitel Inc., a systems integrator in Indianapolis, believes Microsoft is likely to get continued feedback on the NT Workstation beta in
July and August. Code would be frozen in September, followed by a production release in October, with NT Server hitting the market by end of the year or early next year.
Microsoft is paying a lot of attention to NT bugs because ³corporate deployments in the thousands will be held up without a solid release,² said Henderson.
"NT 4.0 is going to become the default for many of our Windows 3.x corporate clients," said Henderson. "In my mind this is VARs and corporate America looking for the stability, speed and muscularity they feel is missing in what they perceive to be the compromised implementation of Windows 95."
The delay could slow sales in the second half. Distributors and master resellers were hoping NT would help them push desktop upgrades.
"This is going to be huge, big, outstanding," said David R. Dukes, co-chairman of master distributor Ingram Micro Inc., Santa Ana, Calif.
Bob O'Malley, a senior vice president for MicroAge Inc., Tempe, Ariz., said NT 4.0 will spark a "revamp of the corporate desktop. It's going to be rolled out throughout the enterprise."
Problems meeting the summer deadline may explain why Microsoft still has not talked with hardware OEMs about NT Server and Workstation licensing or marketing plans. PC executives privately said Microsoft has left them in the lurch. "Unlike Win 95, we don't have to hype NT,"
said Paul Maritz, Microsoft's group vice president for platforms. "We've been working with VARs for years, and lots are already familiar with it."
SHAWN WILLETT, JODI MARDESICH, BARBARA DARROW & MICHAEL
KANELLOS contributed to this story.
Return to list of stories
Computer Reseller News
June 10, 1996
Issue 687
================================================================
As you see more and more of this <and you will, you will..>,
watch the short interest closely on MSFT....
Joe... |
