Windows Server 2003: The Day After

The company also introduced Visual Studio.NET and SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition (64-bit), a product that needs renaming worse than it needs market acceptance. The trio of solutions is designed to create an interoperable enterprise infrastructure for all interested customers but will work best for those that are established Microsoft shops with consistent upgrades paths.

Calling Server 2003 "not just an incremental upgrade, but a breakthrough" technology, Ballmer immediately addressed question No. 1 in the minds of skeptics: That given the current crippled state of the economy and of IT spending in general, it this any time to be releasing such a big, expensive product suite? "The challenge in this economy is not just to reduce costs, but to enable companies to do more with less, so it's absolutely the right time to introduce this server and bring innovation to the marketplace," he said.

Read on for much more about:

• Microsoft's enterprise vision
• How the technology already is being deployed by customers big and small