Microsoft has recently confirmed that its NT 5.0 will be renamed Windows 2000. There will be at least four versions of Windows 2000: Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and Windows Data Center Server. Only the lowest level will be suitable for a standalone desktop device.
The Data Center Server is the only entirely new component in Windows 2000. It is intended to tackle the scalability issue which has plagued NT. Plans are to offer a 32-way OEM version, meaning that up to 32 processors can be clustered. However, there has been a tendency for performance to deteriorate when more than four processors are clustered using NT 4.0-half of what Microsoft claims for it. (Companies such as Amdahl, Sequent, and Unisys, which are concerned with Data Center Servers, are cautious about predicting more than 16-way processing.)
Microsoft did not address the question of whether Windows 98 will be combined with Windows NT 5.0 under the new name (most likely as Windows 2000 Professional), but it did dramatically alter its marketing of Windows 98. For the past year, Microsoft has emphasized that Windows 98 is a consumer product and Windows NT is the platform of choice for business and institutions. Now it is actively selling Windows 98 to business and institutions.
Microsoft's new position, with regard to Windows 98, appears to be more than a way of dealing with the delays in completion of the latest version of the NT product. The company appears to have realized that many organizations have major investments in legacy applications which will run on Windows 98, but not on NT, and/or PCs which are not robust enough to handle NT-a product which runs badly on anything less than a Pentium 230 with 32 MB of memory.
