'Big bang' to jolt Microsoft users

摘要

Microsoft might be hyping its next-generation Longhorn software as a "big bang" event, but the company is being quiet about the fact that the products will require corporate customers to perform multiple, carefully planned upgrades reminiscent of the difficult migration from Windows NT to 2000. The Longhorn lineup also will wreak havoc with the hardware and software plans of corporate executives, especially those now running Windows 2000 Server, which could reach its early 2007 end-of-sup-port life cycle before the Longhorn server is released. Longhorn is an umbrella term that Microsoft uses to define its collection of infrastructure software. It's the first step toward integrating all that software around. Net and Web services and requires overhauling the client and server operating systems, Office and everything that runs on top. The integration effort to create a "software stack" aligns with similar efforts by competitors such as IBM with WebSphere and Sun with Project Orion.