IBM critical of Win2000 technology

IBM says it is gearing up for a Windows 2000 (Win2000) sales push even though it's still not happy with certain features of Microsoft's latest operating system.

According to IBM, for every dollar made licensing Win2000, it stands to make a further $8 to $9 dollars from the hardware, software and services needed to run it.

But Big Blue repeated concerns to it had with certain elements of Win2000, most notably Active Directory, the operating system's network management tool.

Adam Jollans, marketing manager for IBM's Windows NT Software, said the problem is that while Win2000 works very well with Win2000, it works somewhat less well in a cross-platform environment, and as the vast majority of IBM's customers work in mixed environments, it is an important issue. "It continually comes back to heterogeneous versus homogenous," he said.

Still, IBM will be using Win2000 itself. "The default desktop throughout IBM will be Win2000 Professional," he said.

"It's a strong operating system, but it has added some things that other operating systems have had for a long time," he said, noting that the multiclustering available on Windows 2000 is an area where Unix excels already. "It can't replace Unix; it can't replace mainframes," he said.