Hewlett-Packard added its voice Tuesday to those of other major computers vendors announcing support for Microsoft Corp.'s first attack on the information center -- Windows 2000 Datacenter Server operating system. As of now, HP's 8-way NetServer LXr 8500DC will support the new Microsoft OS, while a 32-way NetServer system running Windows 2000 Datacenter is due to appear at the start of 2001, according to Rich Archuleta, vice president and general manager of HP's network server division.
The 32-way system will support a maximum of 32 Intel Pentium III Xeon CPUs (central processing units), up to 64G bytes of RAM (random access memory), 96 PCI (peripheral component interconnect) slots and hardware partitioning.
Other HP products also offering support for Windows 2000 Datacenter are the vendor's SureStore E Disk Array XP256 for shared storage and the company's OpenView systems management software.
HP, like its peers, is additionally including a range of services designed to make the software more attractive to users. The computer vendor expects a gradual slow user adoption curve for Windows 2000 Datacenter, Archuleta said.
"Windows 2000 Datacenter is a brand-new operating system that takes Windows into a very different space, one that is more business-focused and uptime-focused," Archuleta said. Over the first year, HP expects to sell a relatively low volume of the new Microsoft enterprise OS, as a lot of customers pilot the operating system and start to get used to it, then sales should ramp up considerably in the software's second year, he added.
HP is due to join Microsoft Chief Executive Officer and President Steve Ballmer here Tuesday afternoon at the software vendor's Enterprise 2000 launch, where Windows 2000 Datacenter will be on show along with upcoming Microsoft applications such as its SQL Server 2000 database and its Exchange 2000 groupware. Also at the event will be other computer companies, including Compaq Computer Corp., Dell Computer Corp., IBM Corp. and Unisys Corp.
Microsoft released Windows 2000 Datacenter Server to manufacturing last month. The OS is only available from certified Datacenter partners such as Compaq, Dell, HP and Unisys, all of whom plan to offer the software with a range of services.
For instance, HP will offer three different Windows 2000 Datacenter support and service packages, Archuleta said. Two of them will be aimed at product deployment -- Foundation and Critical Systems -- the latter will include additional features designed to provide higher levels of availability and uptime, he added. The third offering, the Pilot Kit, aims to walk customers through the new OS. "Customers told us they are going to want to take it (Windows 2000 Datacenter) and kick it around a bit, kick the tires on it," Archuleta said. The pilot kit includes consulting, training, site preparation, testing and system verification.
HP is also providing what it terms a "risk-free payment plan," particularly aimed at customers who may initially be unsure of the final size of their Windows 2000 Datacenter deployment. "They can modulate payments based on the deployment, growing larger or smaller over time as business conditions change," Archuleta said. "It allows a lot of flexibility."
HP is taking the lessons it has learned through dealing with customers for its HP-UX Unix operating system and bringing them into the Windows market, Archuleta said. A year ago, HP carried out a major research effort into what both HP and non-HP customers were looking for in terms of OS support and has applied some of those findings to its support for Windows 2000 Datacenter, he added. "We asked them what are we missing, what do we needed to improve more," Archuleta said.
The vendor discovered that over the course of the life cycle of an OS, customers were being handed off from one company's product support team to another. HP is addressing that lack of consistency, making it one of the key elements of its Windows 2000 Datacenter support, Archuleta explained. "An HP solutions manager will be assigned to an account, who can take the customer from the new initial evaluation through to deployment and support," he said. "The manager is with the customer every step of the way."
Archuleta sees two different classes of likely early adopters for Windows 2000 Datacenter, mostly drawn from medium-size to large businesses, although he doesn't rule out the possibility of HP supporting new service providers who are relatively small, employing initially perhaps only 50 to 100 in staff.
"There will be those who run Exchange as a mail system over a large number of Windows servers and who want to consolidate to help reduce costs," he said. The second group of early adopters will be in the high-end enterprise applications space using ERP (enterprise resource planning) software from the likes of SAP AG and seeking high levels of availability, Archuleta added.
HP will be the first vendor certified by Microsoft to offer a four-node clustering configuration of Windows 2000 Datacenter, Archuleta said. HP has long had a technical team in place at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, working closely with the vendor on development of the enterprise OS, he added.
"Microsoft realized it couldn't do it by itself," said Dan Kuznetsky, vice president of systems software research at market research company International Data Corp. (IDC), based in Framingham, Massachusetts. Each of the hardware vendors voicing support for Windows 2000 Datacenter will be touting the support they offered Microsoft in helping develop an aspect of the new OS, be it clustering or scaling, the analyst added.
Microsoft can't afford to get anything wrong in the data center arena, Kuznetsky said, as the software vendor moves into a very different world than it's previously operated in and deals with a very different set of users.
"It's no longer business people in business units making business investments. It's IT organizations who put their job on the line every time they make a decision," he said. "The IT community talk to each other quite often; any mistake or failure goes round (the community) like wildfire, which could even prevent Microsoft from selling in the data center for a decade or more."
Because of such a danger, Microsoft and its partners are layering the OS with a very "extensive and expensive service portfolio," Kuznetsky said. "Failure is just not acceptable," he added. There's no option for customers to buy Windows 2000 Datacenter without the services.
The expensive services and Windows 2000 Datacenter's availability on high-end systems, not lower cost computers, are likely to limit the number of people signing up to buy the new OS.
"This fits well into strategy of Microsoft and its partners who are seeking a slow measured adoption. They want to make sure that every single customer is successful," Kuznetsky said. "The (Windows 2000 Datacenter) machines look quite interesting; the services look comprehensive; it's a good way to have a successful start."
However, Windows 2000 Datacenter still has a long way to go to perform as Unix does in terms of scalability, clustering and of having a broad range of supported hardware platforms, Kuznetsky said. Although the new OS might well sit well with users of Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server, users in multivendor environments might not be so keen to adopt the operating system due to difficulties in fitting it into their management strategy.