REDMOND, Wash. -- Dec. 15, 1999 - Today Microsoft Corp. announced the release to manufacturing of the Microsoft^® Windows^® 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Advanced Server operating systems. Hundreds of customers, PC manufacturers, and independent software and hardware vendors have signed off on the quality, performance and reliability of Windows 2000, confirming that it is ready to ship to customers. Microsoft plans general availability of Windows 2000 with a worldwide launch on Feb. 17, 2000.

"Our customers have been intimately involved in the development process for Windows 2000 since its inception and they expect nothing less than the highest-quality, most reliable platform on which to run their businesses," said Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft. "We've heard from our customers loud and clear that Windows 2000 is now ready to support their demanding needs, so we're proud to release Windows 2000 to manufacturing today."

Windows 2000 is an ideal platform for the next generation of business computing and addresses the full range of customers' computing needs, from laptops and desktops to high-end, clustered servers. The operating system helps organizations Internet-enable their business with a reliable, manageable infrastructure that is optimized for existing and emerging hardware. In addition, new benchmark results illustrate the specific performance benefits that customers will receive with Windows 2000. These tests show that Windows 2000 Professional outperforms Windows 95, Windows 98 and the Windows NT^® Workstation 4.0 operating system running on a computer with a minimum 64 MB of memory, while Windows 2000 Server offers superior price and performance in the areas of symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP), scalability and Web applications.

"Today's completion of Windows 2000 represents a phenomenal team effort and would not be possible without the amazing contributions from our employees, customers and partners across the industry," said Jim Allchin, group vice president of the Platforms Group at Microsoft. "Windows 2000 is the most reliable, highest-performing operating system in our company's history and provides a platform to support customers' stringent needs for high system availability."

Internet-Enabling Businesses

Windows 2000 empowers companies to Internet-enable their businesses with a fully integrated Web applications server for building reliable, highly scalable distributed Web applications. As the cornerstone of Windows DNA 2000, Windows 2000 provides a comprehensive and integrated set of capabilities for Web developers including a high-performance Web server featuring Active Server Pages, COM+ component services, transactions and message queue support, database access, Internet security, and end-to-end XML support. Customers can quickly build state-of-the-art Web applications with Windows 2000.

"Scalability is crucial to the success of our online auction business. If our site can't simultaneously manage the thousands of items stored in inventory on the back end along with the traffic generated by our nearly 1 million registered users, then we lose business by the minute," said Greg Jones, CEO at uBid.com. "The scalability of Windows 2000 has been stunning, and at the end of the day, this means we can focus on our business and our customers and not on worrying whether our systems can support our ever-expanding business."

Reliability

Windows 2000 provides a more reliable platform and has been designed from the ground up through an improved architecture to help ensure higher system uptime and more consistent application performance, enabling businesses to achieve greater levels of availability.

"We rely on our technology infrastructure to have a competitive advantage. Because of this, we're constantly pushing technology boundaries to achieve our goals, but if our systems aren't reliable, we lose that advantage -- and we're in the business of winning," said William Bolt, vice president of Information Services for the Phoenix Suns and Arizona Diamondbacks. "With Windows 2000 running in production today throughout our organization, features like system file protection are reducing our support burden and freeing up IT resources. In addition, our 16-bit ticket sales application has worked flawlessly under Windows 2000, reducing our overall software costs and filling our stadiums."

Manageability

Windows 2000 is a more manageable operating system that provides centralized, policy-based management with new technologies such as IntelliMirror™ management technologies and the Active Directory™ service; greater interoperability; and faster deployment options that lower the total cost of ownership for organizations of all sizes.

"Banking is an industry where mergers and acquisitions are a constant occurrence. A major hurdle in merging two financial institutions is getting a full understanding of the newly combined environment," said Dustin Sauter, Enterprise Systems, Wells Fargo Bank. "With Windows 2000 and Active Directory, we are able to store and manage our client information in a single directory rather than having it distributed across several hundred dissimilar databases. In addition, the Active Directory is interoperable with other databases within the company. This functionality helps minimize administration redundancy within our company and has already had a positive impact on our bottom line."

Best Platform for New Devices

Windows 2000 Professional increases business users' productivity by providing seamless access to information -- whether connected or disconnected from the network -- broad laptop support and advanced networking hardware such as digital subscriber line (DSL), cable modems and wireless technologies. Windows 2000 also provides customers with support for current and emerging peripherals such as Universal Serial Bus (USB), IEEE 1394 and infrared devices.

"Inacom has 10,500 employees working remotely in over 70 locations worldwide, many in client locations. The word 'mobile' doesn't even begin to describe our operation," said Jean Wolf Smith, vice president of Solutions Delivery Operations at Inacom. "Windows 2000 Professional and Server solve all the remote access issues we are most concerned about -- and has given us the best elements of Windows 95 and Windows 98 while ensuring we have the power of Windows NT-based technologies on our laptops. Also, it enables us to have a very effective and secure enterprise collaboration platform in a distributed environment."

Windows 2000 Packs a Performance Punch

Whether deploying Windows 2000 on the desktop or in the most demanding e-commerce environment, customers can expect significant performance advantages over alternative platforms:

• Windows 2000 Professional is the fastest Windows client yet. Independent tests conducted by Ziff-Davis Labs and IT Week show that Windows 2000 Professional is up to 39 percent faster than Windows 95, 30 percent faster than Windows 98, and up to 24 percent faster than Windows NT Workstation 4.0 in configurations with 64 MB of memory or higher.
• Web sites and Web applications run faster on Windows 2000. New results submitted to the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) by Dell Computer Corp. show that Windows 2000 Server running on a single-processor PowerEdge 2400 server outperforms alternative offerings running on an Intel-based single processor configuration by 30 percent.*
• Windows 2000 Server is an industry price and performance leader. Audited TPC-H results submitted by Hewlett-Packard Co. show that Windows 2000 Advanced Server running on an eight-way server provides comparable performance to competitive offerings on a 12-way configuration for less than 30 percent of the cost.
• Windows 2000 Server scales to meet the most demanding application environments. Testing by Compaq Computer Corp. using the SAP Standard 4.5 B Retail benchmark shows that Windows 2000 Advanced Server running on Compaq-based servers delivers the industry's best SAP retail performance.

Details on these and other performance results can be found on Microsoft's Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/guide/platform/
performance/default.asp.

Availability

General availability of Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Advanced Server begins on Feb. 17, 2000. Windows 2000 Datacenter Server is expected to be available approximately 90 to 120 days later. For more information about Windows 2000, please see http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software -- any time, any place and on any device.

Windows 2000

Quote Sheet

"Windows 2000 is stable, tested and ready."

-- Bill Brown

Vice President

Customer and Technical Services

AIMCO

"Windows 2000 rules!"

-- Paul Grayson

President and CEO

Alibre Inc.

"Windows 2000 Professional is done -- ship it."

-- Phillip Jenkins

Audio Visual Consulting

"As a highly focused e-business services company, we're needed to implement a business computing environment internally that is information-driven. Windows 2000 delivers an
e-business environment. We believe it's production-ready."

-- Scott Kitlinski

CIO

Banyan Worldwide

"Windows 2000 was our holiday gift."

-- Gary King

CIO

Barnesandnoble.com llc

"The three R's: robust, reliable, ready."

-- Wayne Rosing

CTO

Caere Corp.

"Windows 2000 is revolutionary for small business."

-- Sheldon Laube

CEO

CenterBeam Inc.

"Windows 2000 will deliver applications leveraging the Internet generation of intelligent networking."

-- Peter Alexander

Vice President of Enterprise Marketing

Cisco Systems Inc.

"Windows 2000 rocks the enterprise!"

-- Chuck Donchess

Vice President of Marketing and Business Development

Commerce One

"Windows 2000 -- designed, tested and deployed on Compaq."

-- Enrico Pesatori

Senior Vice President and

Group General Manager

Enterprise Solutions and Services Group

Compaq Computer Corp.

"Windows 2000 is rock solid."

-- Baxley Miceli

The Computer Solution Co.

"It's rock-solid and ready to go live."

-- Jason Lockhead

CTO

Data Return Corp.

"www.dell.com + Windows 2000 = better business computing experience."

-- Carl Everett

Senior Vice President

Personal Systems Group

Dell Computer Corp.

"Windows 2000 is ready for prime time."

-- Matt Vandyke

Entex Information Services

"'Set it and Forget it' performance for Windows 2000."

-- George Goodrich

Windows NT/ 2000 Program Manager

Executive Software International Inc.

"Windows 2000 -- ready and prime."

-- Chiseki Sagawa

Fujitsu Ltd.

"The new millennium just started."

-- Donna Jeker

Vice President

Enterprise Security Group

GemPlus

"Windows 2000 stands for reliability and manageability."

-- Stephen Crocker

E-Solutions Architect

Grapevine Consulting Group

"Windows 2000 on HP systems supercharges business computing."

-- Webb McKinney

Senior Vice President and General Manager, PC Organization

Hewlett-Packard Co.

"Windows 2000 broadens our e-business solutions."

-- Ralph Martino

Vice President of Strategy and Marketing

IBM Personal Systems Group

"Windows 2000 is Microsoft's most rigorously tested product to date -- it is ready to ship."

-- David Race

Windows 2000 Program Manager

ICL

"Windows 2000 is ready! Our MultiTrade service (a multibank on line trading system is entirely based on Windows 2000."

-- Alberto Zambolin

Il Sole 24 ORE Radiocor

"Infospace.com and Windows 2000 are the future, and the future is now."

-- Naveen Jain

CEO

Infospace.com

"Windows 2000 is best operating system ever."

-- James Liggins

Founder and President

Inner City Computer Society

"Pentium III processor users can now look forward to 2000 Windows of opportunity!"

-- Intel Corp.

"We are planning to downsize off our Mainframe to deploy Windows 2000."

-- Oh Hoon Kwon

IT Manager

Lotte Confectionery Co. Ltd.

"New Look had a vision of how IT should look, Microsoft had a product ready to go ... Windows 2000!"

-- Daniel Halle

Lunetterie New Look

"Windows 2000 is enterprise-ready -- migrate, monitor and manage with Mission Critical."

-- Rick Pleczko

Vice President of Marketing and Product Management

Mission Critical Software Inc.

"The Next generation of computing is here."

-- David Osborne

Chief Technology Officer

MMA

"NEC computers perform with Windows 2000."

-- Michael DeNeffe

Vice President of Outbound Marketing

NEC Computers Inc.

"Windows 2000 is ready to roll."

-- David Thompson

CIO

PeopleSoft Inc.

"Windows 2000 -- ready for the public safety industry."

-- John K. Fuller

Vice President of Marketing

Plant Equipment Inc.

"Rational Test Foundation + Windows 2000 = reliability."

-- Eric Schurr

Senior Vice President

Marketing and Windows Suite Products

Rational Software Corp.

"Windows 2000 is great. It's already the primary operating system on all our company laptops."

-- Todd Fine
RDA Consultants Ltd.

"Windows 2000 is ready to run and ahead of the competition for Internet auctioning."

-- Kwang-Duck Kim

IT Manager

Samsung Corporation Co. Ltd.

"Turning Internet promises into profits with mySAP.com and Windows 2000."

-- Ingo Hoffman

SAP AG

"Windows 2000 is a dream come true."

-- Jeff Weyford

CIO

SmartMart

"We found no showstopper that would prevent Windows 2000 from shipping."

-- Rico Piantoni

Trading System Development Manager

SWX Swiss Exchange

"Do I feel Windows 2000 is ready? You bet."

-- Craig Muirhead

Telus Server Support Services

"Toshiba is focused and ready."

-- Jeffrey Friederichs

Vice President and General Manager of Marketing

Toshiba Computer Systems Group

"Windows 2000 is done, ship it."

-- Greg Jones

CEO

uBid

"We eat, sleep and drink this stuff."

-- Irv Epstein

Vice President of Enterprise NT Programs

Unisys Corp.

"WRQ applauds Microsoft for advancing Windows 2000 to meet customer needs."

-- Sue Lindsey

WRQ

"Microsoft is positioned beautifully for Y2K and beyond with this flagship product."

-- Craig Restle

Director of Sales

Xpedior