What Effect Will Windows 2003 Have on the Hosting Industry

Jan-17th-2010
As announced by

Microsoft on April 24, 2003, Windows 2003 Server is now generally available.

This means hosting companies will be starting to offer the Windows 2003

operating system as an option to their clients.

Digex said, in a

press release on April 24, 2003, that they would have “immediate availability of

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 within the Digex Managed Platforms service line.”

Other hosting companies that were contacted have not been so quick to give a

time when they would have a Windows 2003 package available.

It is yet to be

determined if security concerns over the operating system are the reasons behind

no official release date being given for new servers using the new operating

system or not. There is no doubt that everyone has questions about the security

of the new software release.

Last year alone,

there were many different viruses and worms that propagated though Microsoft’s

operating system, causing millions of dollars worth of damage, including Nomad

and Code Red. Everyone in the computer industry is now wondering if Microsoft

has gotten the security right.

Microsoft has

said that Windows 2003 Server is shipped secure. The reason the product is said

to be secure by Microsoft officials is because in default configuration IIS

(Internet Information Server) is disabled. Web hosting companies will have to

turn on the web server to serve web pages for their clients. The big question is

if the software will still be secure once the web server is turned on.

Security might

be on every ones mind but hosting companies are also looking for the cost

savings promised by Microsoft.

Microsoft has

announced a new Web Edition with the release of the Windows 2003 Server. There

are no Client Access Licenses (Calls) and the cost is significantly less at a

price of $399. The price tag for the Standard Edition is $999, which is the same

as it is for Windows 2000, says Microsoft’s Windows 2000 site. With a $600

dollar per server savings, the hosting industry will start seeing more

competitors in the budget-hosting segment with servers running on Windows 2003

Server; a segment now only containing a handful of Windows hosts.

Servers running

open source operating systems like FreeBSD and Linux currently fill the budget

hosts segment of the market. Microsoft has seen this as an issue for a while now

and is expecting the addition of the Web Edition to allow more budget hosting

packages on the Microsoft operating system.

The trend for

non-Windows based hosting companies to start deploying services based on the Web

Edition of the Windows 2003 Server has already started thanks to Microsoft’s new

licensing and pricing structure. One such company to announce plans to start

selling servers with Windows Web Edition is RackShack.net.

RackShack.net

has been a Red Hat Linux and Cobalt Raq shop since they were started but they

have posted on their site that they would be releasing, on

May 1, 2003, prices for systems with “Windows Web

Edition powered by Ensim.” While requests for comments sent to RackShack.net

were unanswered in time for publication, posts on their user’s forum have said

the cost of the Windows operating system was the reason behind them not having

Windows dedicated servers in the past.

The real test

for Windows 2003 Server will be if developers will want to rush to it or not.

Microsoft said they have made some major stability changes to IIS 6.0, which

ships with Windows 2003 Server.

The developers

that were contacted to see if they were rushing to get their hands on Windows

2003 Server did not have definitive answers. One developer said “I have not had

much time to even look at the differences so I cannot give an answer to that

question.”

One thing is for

sure; Microsoft has released its Web Edition of the server to compete against

the open source alternatives. Now Microsoft just has to hope developers will

bite at the chance to get hosting for about the same cost as the open source

alternatives.

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By: Sadain

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