Microsoft WindowsServer 2003 RC2

For many companies, especially small to medium-sized enterprises and those that will have to pay for an upgrade from W2K to Server 2003, it's hard to see too many things that are truly compelling to upgrade. For them, W2K will continue to do a strong job and they won't miss out on many benefits by overlooking the Server 2003 platform. If they're using Exchange Server 2000 and wish to move to Exchange Server 2003, for example, to get real benefits from its client-side cacheing and the vastly improved Outlook Web Access, they can do so while staying firmly in the W2K space.

Overall, the three years Microsoft has spent from the release of W2K to the arrival of Server 2003 haven't been wasted. Everywhere you look, there has been an almost endless list of improvements, tweaks and fixes, which make it a somewhat nicer world in which to work compared with W2K. If you're already on W2K, you're probably on a rolling licence programme, in which case you can choose to deploy at your own pace.

However, the bell is clearly tolling. For standard line-of-business file, print, authentication and so forth, it will be hard to justify a move from Server 2003 to something else in the future. The fact that Server 2003 is such a rounded and polished performer in this space means that its successor is going to have to grapple with the real issues of document management, knowledge management, team working and so on in a way that no OS has yet attempted.

Author: Jon Honeyball