San Francisco: Software giant Microsoft Corporation on April 25 announced the worldwide availability of integrated server platform – Windows Server 2003, and said the new product would enable corporates to do more with less at a time when budgets were tight.

"It is a significant piece of work we have ever done. The challenge before the corporates today is not just cost reduction but to do more with less, in an environment where the budgets are tight. It is the right time to bring new innovations to the marketplace for our customers," Microsoft's chief executive officer (CEO) Steve Ballmer said while unveiling the Windows Server 2003, with the theme – 'Do more with less'.

Delivering the Keynote address at the launch of the new product, Ballmer told an audience comprising mediapersons, analysts and partner community that Windows Server 2003 was not just a small incremental release in Operating System, but was in fact a "breakthrough".

"It has new additional features and enhancements. It is a breakthrough in terms of built-in security and reliability… in terms of improvement in manageability and breakthrough in terms of what it will mean for the software developer community," he said.

According to the company, the Windows Server platform would allow customers to power Microsoft .NET connected applications, networks and web services from workgroup to the data centre, while deriving more value from their existing IT investments and lowering overall computing costs.

A play of light and sound as with most of the global Microsoft product launches, this launch of Windows Server 2003 was marked with comments and feedback from the users of the new product including Kentucky Department of Education, Honeywell ACS and JetBlue Airways.

Simultaneously with Windows Server 2003 availability, Microsoft also announced Visual Studio .NET 2003 and SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition.

The company feels that the three products would establish new standard in business value by providing an integrated, interoperable infrastructure that delivers performance, scalability and reliability required to support the budget demands of today's lean IT departments.

"As Microsoft's flagship server product, Windows Server 2003 delivers the performance and productivity business customers expect while maximising every Dollar of their investments," Ballmer said terming the launch of the three products as "cornerstones" of the Microsoft's enterprise strategy.

"The new product would enable customers to run their server infrastructure 30 per cent more efficiently, enhance information worker productivity, and build applications in half the time with twice the performance," he said.

The Windows Server 2003 family includes Server 2003 Datacentre Edition; Server 2003 Enterprise Edition; Server 2003 Standard Edition; Server 2003 Web Edition and Windows Small Business Server 2003 (which would be available in the third quarter of this year).

Speaking on the occasion, president Paul Otellini of microprocessor company Intel described how Intel-based server combined with Microsoft's new operating system and database delivered enhanced capabilities and performance.

Otellini also showed world's highest ever single system transaction processing performance achieved on an HP server with Itanium 2 processor, Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000 (Enterprise Edition).

PTI