Gates Touts Windows 2000's Web Strengths

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

May 10, 2000 (12:00 AM EDT)

By Margie Semilof and Stephanie Green,

In his first major keynote as Microsoft's chief software architect, Bill Gates touted the benefit of the company's Windows 2000 product as a platform for the Internet.

The Internet is moving beyond the simple transaction phase toward becoming a full-blown platform, albeit one with many limitations, such as spotty reliability, security, and interoperability, Gates said at Networld+Interop 2000 on Tuesday.

Most security problems relate to administering more than one system, Gates said. He lauded the use of smart cards as one way to eliminate the use of passwords, which he considers to be a security risk.

"Today, almost no corporations are using [smart cards]," Gates said. "There is a lot to be done here."

Regarding interoperability, Gates said the industry will not only have TCP/IP as a network level standard, but at the data level will have XML to exchange data that is self-describing.

Microsoft (stock: MSFT) on Tuesday introduced Windows Services for Unix 2.0 -- software that integrates Unix with Windows 2000.

One network manager at a major corporation said he is impressed by Microsoft's Internet vision, but that corporate America still is a long way from catching up.

James Marino, network support specialist at General Electric, Princeton N.J., said for GE to move to a Windows 2000-type platform would create an interesting challenge because of the way the company's network is designed.

"As a large company, we take a conservative approach to software," Marino said. "It's prudent and conservative, but you do miss out on some of the newer technologies."

To adopt Microsoft's approach, Marino said GE would have to view its backbone and the way it routes traffic differently.

"They do more filtering at the application level, where we do more filtering at the routing level," he said. "Everyone wants to be where he says we are going, and it would be nice to do it, but I don't see it happening this year."