NT Server Rollout
Two-way electronic communications will link GM dealerships and divisions
By Bruce Caldwell and Stuart J. Johnston, with Clinton Wilder
Issue date: May 20, 1996
General Motors Corp. will launch the largest-ever Windows NT Server rollout next month when it starts installing Compaq servers and the Microsoft operating system at 8,400 dealerships. Combined with GM's satellite network, the system, for the first time, will provide two-way electronic communications between GM auto dealerships and its divisions.
The GM deployment is the latest in a series of major victories for Windows NT Server, which is gaining momentum and sales at large companies worldwide.
The project, called Access Common Dealership Environment (CDE), is designed to provide dealers with information about one another's inventory to speed delivery of cars to customers. Dealers also
will be able to download overnight satellite broadcasts that contain data about pricing, dealer incentives, service updates, and other important material that GM previously distributed by mail,
which took weeks or months.
The Villa Marin GM dealership in Staten Island, N.Y., has been testing Access CDE since March and already has seen its customer satisfaction index rise from 92% to 93.5% and its "come-backs," or vehicles returned because of incomplete repair work, decrease by 3%, says Spenser Handros, part-owner of the dealership and chairman of the automaker's dealership technology council.
"This will commonize GM," says Handros. "We didn't have that before because dealers and GM divisions did not have common communications platforms." GM dealers use a variety of desktop computer systems and software, and the makers of those systems are developing interfaces to the Compaq NT servers, which communicate with GM through the PulSat telecommunications network.
At the same time, GM divisions are developing interfaces to ommunicate with the NT servers located in the dealerships.
GM itself is nearing completion of its Common Office Environment project, begun in 1993 to standardize all desktop computing throughout the company. By 1997, 52,000 Compaq PCs with Windows software will have been installed, along with an unspecified number of IBM servers.
GM is just the latest company to pick Windows NT as its server operating system. Vanstar, a computer reseller and systems integrator, said last week that it will deploy Windows NT Server on Hewlett-Packard computers worldwide for United Technologies' Pratt & Whitney jet engine business unit. That deployment eventually will tie together 86 offices in 44 countries, using 50 NT servers.
Installation at Pratt & Whitney offices in Europe, Asia, and the Americas should be completed in the third quarter.
Many other companies plan to install NT servers. Half the 700 IS buyers at large companies surveyed by Sentry Market Research in Westboro, Mass., said they planned to buy NT servers in the next few years.
Intel, for example, plans to standardize on NT desktops worldwide. While the global electronics firm would not specify the number of NT servers it plans to install, officials confirm they intend to deploy
more than 15,000 copies of NT Workstation by the time they are done.
These wins come on the heels of other recent NT announcements, including one by Halifax Building Society, the largest mortgage loan institution in the U.K. (IW, April 8, p. 28).
Several other British financial institutions have chosen NT, including National Westminster Bank, which is deploying NT to more than 2,000 of its bank branches.
The latest win comes as Microsoft announced last week that it has begun shipping the second beta of NT 4.0 to 200,000 beta testers. Many users have been waiting for NT 4.0, expected to ship inAugust, because it adds the Windows 95 user interface.
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NOVL had better act fast.
V.K |
