Microsoft Preps Windows.Net Server With CPU ChangesMicrosoft Preps Windows.Net Server With CPU Changes

Microsoft released the final beta version of Windows.Net Server last week and is planning configuration changes that could result in significant price increases for some customers.

Windows.Net, the successor to the Windows 2000 server line, will ship in four editions, Microsoft said last week. In addition to Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions, Microsoft will add a lower-priced Web Server edition to compete with Linux Web servers.

Perhaps more important for some users, the standard edition of the new server software will support only two Intel processors instead of the four CPUs supported by the current offering, Windows 2000 Server, which is priced at $1,000 per machine. Windows .Net customers will have to make the jump to Enterprise Server in order to run four processors on one computer. Windows 2000 Advanced Server, the current step up from Windows 2000 Server, lists at $4,000. Microsoft hasn't released prices for the new software, sched-uled for general availability next year.

"There's certainly some segment of the population that will be forced to upgrade against their will," Gartner analyst John Enck says. But most large companies running Windows 2000 have bought Advanced Server for running E-mail, enterprise resource planning, and customer-relationship management systems, and small SQL Server databases, bypassing the standard edition, Enck says. With Microsoft's revenue under pressure from the IT spending slowdown and the company beginning a presumably expensive initiative code-named Sable to offer more customers direct sales support, the vendor's trying to encourage purchases of its more expensive products.

Still, Windows.Net may be a tough sell. "Windows 2000's benefits aren't well understood," admits Cliff Reeves, a Windows marketing VP. It doesn't help that Microsoft's licensing changes have raised prices for many Windows shops. "Sometimes it seems as if they're working hard to get us to switch to Unix," says John Thomas, CIO at construction firm Parsons Corp. in Pasadena, Calif., which runs about 1,000 engineering applications on Windows 2000.