Windows 2000 gaining adoption momentum? UBID, WELLFARGO, GM, HSN, SuperMarkets Online
a) uBid, Chicago, will upgrade its 80 servers with Windows 2000 by the end of the year.
b) Wells Fargo,which is moving to Windows 2000 servers for as many as 120,000 users.
c) Another company looking to exploit Windows
2000's management tools is General Motors
Corp. (stock: GM). The automaker is migrating
its 125,000 users to a single, unified Windows
2000 infrastructure. The project will begin in the
first quarter of 2001 and may be done within 18
months, said Mike Adelson, director of global
computing infrastructure.
d) SuperMarkets Online was an early
marquee customer of Windows 2000. In early 2000,
the company -- which offers online grocery
coupons -- ran Windows 2000 on half of its 41
servers and Windows NT on the other half. Now
all its servers run Windows 2000.
The company has increased its traffic capacity by
30 percent to 50 percent without adding
additional hardware, said senior vice president of
operations and chief technology officer Steven
Blyth. Uptime has also improved from about 95
percent to 99.99 percent.
"With Windows NT, it seemed like every week
we had a box we were administering to," Blyth
said. "It happens so rarely now we don't even talk
about it anymore."
Finally, there are advantages in dealing with the
dominant software vendor. Home Shopping
Network Interactive looked to Windows 2000
rather than Unix or another platform because of
scalability, the fact that Windows skills are more
commonly found in the Tampa area where it is
headquartered, and a desire to reduce the
number of vendors with which it had to maintain
relationships.
Home Shopping Network launched Windows
2000 in late August, transitioning from a mix of
Windows NT and Sun servers and a Unisys
mainframe to eight Windows 2000 servers. The
company now supports 780,000 unique visitors
and 18 million page views.
"Microsoft is the only vendor that offers a
breadth of products. Ninety percent of the
software you need, and all the hardware, comes
from Microsoft or closely allied partners," said
Scott Mitchell, chief technical officer for Home
Shopping Network.
Some companies, such as Home Shopping
Network, saw immediate need to go to Windows
2000. But many don't see a reason to make a
change yet. And others say the trip to Windows
2000 should be taken slowly and carefully. |
