War of Words: Will Windows 2000 beat the criticism?

While the IT community waits with bated breath for Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system (OS), potential users are being warned not to jump on the bandwagon without due care and attention.

Last week, at a Gartner Group conference in the US, Tom Bittman, vice president and research director at the market research firm, told delegates to hold back for at least nine months after the product ships - and a further 18 months for large implementations.

According to Gartner's research, at least 50 per cent of the NT installed base will ignore the first release of Windows 2000.

A poll of end users in the UK suggests Bittman may already be preaching to the converted. Caution - and even scepticism - are the prevalent watchwords.

Frank Coyle, IT director at John Menzies Distribution, said: "I wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole." He explained that his ultimate desire is for a stable OS: "We currently use NT and it's not as stable as we would like, but we have no good reason to move away from it." Coyle expects the first release of Windows 2000 to be even less stable.

He is also frustrated with the constant series of upgrades vendors try to force on end users. "I will not be bounced about by someone who wants to release an updated OS when it suits them," he said.

Brian Collins, IS manager at the Royal College of Surgeons, agreed. "If I had a very long barge pole, I still wouldn't go near it," he said. Collins explained he's happy using NT4 and too busy dealing with the millennium bug. He added that there are very good reasons not to upgrade. "The holes in it will be so big you could drive a truck through it - plus it's being bodged so it comes out in time," he claimed.

David Taylor, chairman of IT directors' group, Certus, backed the claims. "Initially, it will be full of bugs," he said.

Brendan Major, IT director at the National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), is concerned about the stability of the OS, and said: "We have no plans to migrate to Windows 2000." Major added it is very difficult to justify frequent upgrades to business managers, even if there are good technical reasons for rolling out the very latest OS.

Michel Khan, IT director at Specsavers, said his company is unlikely to move to it for some time: "I need to fully understand the costs. Because of the memory requirement, we would need to upgrade each PC within the company."

He added: "The problem with Microsoft is that they don't understand the implications their software can have on companies running mixed environments." He attributed the software giant's success to marketing: "If I marketed a car that had failures I would be slaughtered by the national press, but Microsoft do it and get away with it."

Ian Bramley, director of the enterprise platform group at the Butler Group, agreed with the 'wait and see' consensus but claimed the product's ultimate success is a foregone conclusion. According to his research, 70 to 80 per cent of all enterprise accounts are already on the path to NT. "With 10 per cent of the total corporate workload running NT, our research suggests that will rise to 35 to 40 per cent over the next four years," he said.

When asked why so many IT directors are wary of upgrading, Bramley said: "There has been enormous publicity regarding the delayed release and this has caused frustration for the IT director community."

Bramley also believes Microsoft's timing could have been better. "Companies are putting a platform freeze in the run up to the Year 2000. But Microsoft is at a level of quality that exceeds the release of NT4 - which was a good release".

He admitted that companies running distributed NT servers face a pretty high cost of support, but claimed that new features incorporated in Windows 2000 should improve manageability and cost. He expects early adopters to go with Windows 2000 this year, but suggested all companies need to learn about it and see what it could do for them.

Overall, however, the message is clear: look before you leap. And don't leap for a while yet.

*Silicon.com will be publishing Microsoft's response to this article in two weeks' time. On Wednesday, we will be kicking off a special series of video and text articles devoted to a technology some see as a real challenge to Windows' dominance: Linux.*