IT consultants believe it will take one buying cycle to upgrade the hardware of Windows NT machines to handle Windows 2000. Microsoft is expected to release Windows 2000 Datacenter six months after the initial Windows 2000 release. For some, the release will come just in time. The last of these is more likely and certainly more scalable than is popularly recognized. In the end, companies will install Windows 2000 largely for its processor scalability, but also for IntelliMirror, enhanced directory services, and improved reliability.
Different customers have different scalability requirements.
Compaq is another vendor large enough to have mixed approaches to scalability. Perhaps Compaq's most interesting scalability stories come from its service workers, as they expand their operations into more and larger mission-critical roles. Compaq's Gentili believes architecture and infrastructure to be important to crafting business solutions. His colleagues fulfill strategic assignments by looking at requirements, he says, and scaling infrastructure to match. He also coauthors Regular Expressions, a column about scripting languages that runs in SunWorld magazine.