Microsoft's Jim Allchin discussed Windows NT 5.0 in detail during his keynote address at the NetWorld+Interop tradeshow in Las Vegas on Wednesday and the directions Microsoft's top-tier OS would take in the future. Allchin said that Windows NT 5.0 Beta 2 would ship in "early summer" and would be nearly feature-complete.
"We are spending $1 billion and have 5,000 people working on bringing this product to market," Allchin said. He then discussed the four key components of Windows NT 5.0:
1) Chrome, a new Internet Explorer subsystem for 3D rendering of Web sites. Chrome will ship this year for Windows 98 and NT PCs; but will require 350 MHz+ Pentium II systems with AGP video cards.
2) Advanced Storage, including Hierarchical Storage Management technology licensed from Veritas.
3) Policy-based management that Microsoft says will lower the total cost of ownership and includes Active Directory integration with enterprise resource planning applications, including those from SAP and Baan.
4) NetShow Server 3.0 (now in beta), which includes a "theater" level add-on that provides DVD-quality video streaming over the Web.
Microsoft also plans to embed data mining capabilities directly into SQL Server 7.0, rather than offer them as an add-on, Allchin said. SQL Server 7 is due in late 1998