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News Snippets

December 1999 News

  • US Army retreats
  • MS Win CE terminal
  • MSX 2000 as Killer App

US Army retreats from Windows NT

The US Army has retreated from Windows NT on the hosting server of its web-site and deployed MacOS because it believes it to be more secure from cyber terrorists. It will use a Macintosh system running the WebStar webserver from StarNine Technologies. The reason for choosing MacOs is because it does not have a command shell and does not enable remote logins.

MS Windows CE as data collection terminal

MS Windows CE is beginning to gain momentum in the data collection terminal business, but adoption of the platform as a general purpose client is limited. It is facing major challenges from Palm, Psion, HP & Casio. LG Electronics and Philips have withdrawn from the market. Ericsson have abandoned CE to replace it with the Symbian EPOC O/S. The question this raises is which platform will dominate the executive lite-portable market and which will dominate the personal organiser market?

MS Exchange 2000 as "Killer" Application

MS Exchange 2000 is emerging as the "killer" application for Windows 2000 and Active Directory. MS enters the next millennium with an enormous and new problem - legacy systems. This is one of the problems that caused IBM to decline - it could not carry all of the baggage and keep moving forward as fast as the fleet of foot newcomers. Now IBM itself is considered a newcomer!!!

Shorties

  • Dell is under pressure to deliver. It is described as arrogant and is failing its customers. Is it becoming another MS?
  • SUN will make its Solaris source code available for developers. This is a major offensive on MS & Linux.
  • "If you're doing something small its alright [to use distributed servers], but if you're doing something large its like ploughing a field with 1000 chickens instead of oxen" Gene Amdahl
  • Meta directories are finding a role in the IT infrastructure - Novell, MS and SUN Netscape are all contenders in this space.
  • NHS have dropped Firewall-1 for the Gnat Box. The reasons given are substantially reduced TCO by simpler management.
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