The two biggest complaints about Windows NT - the need to constantly reboot servers and systems failures that lead to the blue screen of death - are two issues that Microsoft expects to resolve to most customer's satisfaction with the release of Windows 2000 later this year.
As we enter 1999, some things obviously are going to make a huge impact. At the top of that list are year-2000 conversions, Internet commerce, outsourcing, and the continued expansion of enterprise resource planning applications.
As general manager of marketing and strategy for IBM Corp.'s new Application and Integration Middleware Business Unit, Alfred Spector has one of the most challenging jobs at Big Blue. Middleware tools such as CICS and MQSeries are at the very core of what gives IBM its competitive edge in transaction processing (TP) applications. But with the advent of Internet commerce, a wave of application servers is giving IBM its biggest challenge in this space in years.