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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ToySoldier who wrote (13000)	12/7/1998 12:39:00 PM
From: jim shiau	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - South Carolina said Monday it will drop out of the antitrust lawsuit against software giant Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news), saying there was sufficient competition in the Internet market. South Carolina was the first state to pull out of the case, brought earlier this year by the federal government and 20 states. State Attorney General Charles Condon said that America Online's proposed $4.2 billion acquisition of Netscape Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:NSCP - news) proved there was plenty of competition among Internet companies. ''Recent events have proven that the Internet is a segment of our economy where innovation is thriving,'' Condon said in a statement. ''Further government intervention or regulation is unnecessary and, in my judgement, unwise.'' Condon disputed that the case would benefit consumers, as other government attorneys argue. ''Consumers have not taken a leading role in this action,'' Condon said. ''That's because there are no monopolies on the Internet.'' The lawsuit alleges that Microsoft improperly used its dominant position supplying computer operating system software on more than 90 percent of personal computers to wrest control of the Internet browser market from Netscape. The trial in the case begins its eighth week Tuesday with Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq:SUNW - news) executive James Gosling on the witness stand. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: ToySoldier who wrote (13000)	12/7/1998 12:56:00 PM
From: C. Niebucc	Respond to of 74651

Nasdaq giving Windows NT a chance news.com By Randy Weston Staff Writer, CNET News.com December 7, 1998, 8:25 a.m. PT Windows NT will finally get its chance to bat in the major leagues. The Nasdaq Stock Exchange is implementing Microsoft's Windows NT operating system for its new stock monitoring system, an application that has to handle huge daily transaction volumes. The Nasdaq recently commissioned consulting firm Micro Modeling Associates and Unisys to test whether NT could handle the exchange's new Surveillance Delivery Real-Time application. The software monitors the market's billions of transactions and alerts Nasdaq officials to any unusual activity. "Billion-share days are becoming increasingly common, stressing our existing surveillance system," said Gregor Bailar, chief information officer of the Nasdaq's parent company, the National Association of Securities Dealers. "Any new system also will need to be able to support a $2 billion day with the capacity to scale up to support a 4 billion-share day." So far, NT is passing the tests. Questions and concerns in the marketplace about NT's ability to handle large loads as well as its reputation for instability have kept Microsoft from conquering the Unix market, a much more reliable system but often more difficult to use. Microsoft recently held a "scalability days" event to prove to the world, or at least potential corporate buyers and skeptical industry watchers, that its product could play in the major leagues. But few companies were willing to bet their businesses on NT--until now. Nasdaq does, however, have a personal stake in seeing Microsoft succeed. The Nasdaq's chief rival, the New York Stock Exchange, has reserved the symbol "M" in hopes of one day luring the world's largest software company to its trading board. But that's not to say the Nasdaq is willing to blindly invest in the marquee name on its market roster without proof that Microsoft's product can handle the job. The study was conducted using actual daily trading with two parallel systems processing the same data. The test involved running 800 transactions per second continuously for an equivalent of eight trading days. The results showed that NT running on clustered Unisys servers could "support peak conditions over an extended period," according to executives involved in the test. "It also "provided analysts with alerts within 200 to 700 milliseconds, well within the 2-second requirement; showed that the system could remain 100 percent available even under stress, and demonstrated instant recovery from all failure tests with no data loss and immediate availability of the backup system." Software for the test included Windows NT 4.0 Server Enterprise Edition, Microsoft Messaging Queue Server 1.0, Microsoft Transaction Server 2.0, and Microsoft SQL Server 6.5. Hardware consisted of Unisys XR/6 servers with 10 processors and 2 gigabytes of memory, running parallel. With the test complete, the Nasdaq has charged Micro Modeling with the job of designing the new MarketWatch software system around the NT platform, which is to be fully implemented in the year 2000.