W2K Datacenter Logo Does Matter

ENT, Feb 26, 2001 by Scott Bekker, Jim Martin

Early adopters of Windows 2000 Datacenter Server put a lot of stock in Microsoft's application certification program.

"The application logo is very important. [An application] has to be certified if we're going to use it," says Paul Bewley, director of the IT center at the Santa Ana Unified School District.

Ditto from Penny Gold, computer specialist at the Naval Surface Warfare Center. "The application certification logo is pretty important. We probably won't use anything that isn't certified," she says.

In the locked-down, change-controlled environment of the Windows Datacenter Program, users see a lot more value in the Certified for Windows 2000 logo for software applications.

With its emphasis on high availability, users are expecting applications and application ISVs to document that they're on board with the program.

Microsoft significantly raised the bar on its application certification programs with Windows 2000. Unlike the old "Designed for" logos used with Windows NT and Back Office, the updated program is intended to highlight applications that take the most advantage of Microsoft's new platform, rather than to simply demonstrate the number of available applications.

Microsoft has logo efforts for Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and, most recently, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server.

The Datacenter test adds additional functionality requirements on applications. For example, an application must run on a four-node fail-over cluster and on a 32-processor machine. The test also adds important support components, such as a vendor must document the ability to support the application 24x7. The test also requires the application to run for a specified period of time under heavy loads without crashing.

According to BMC Software, which recently earned Datacenter certification on one of its products, the logo is proving more important to Datacenter customers than the logos have been for buyers of other Windows 2000 servers.

"All the customers that we've talked to, plus the analysts that we've seen, have told us customers specifically don't buy products for Windows 2000 [Datacenter Server] unless they've been Datacenter certified," says Kim Roy, manager for product marketing for Windows 2000 solutions at BMC Software. "It's really being driven by the customers more than the other certifications were." .

BMC's Patrol for Windows 2000 Servers, an automated system monitoring and management tool, recently became just the third application to earn the Certified for Windows 2000 Datacenter Server logo.

To date, Microsoft has its own SQL Server 2000 certified for Datacenter and NetlQ achieved certification of its AppManager Suite. Other vendors known to be working on gaining the Datacenter Server software certification include Computer Associates and Veritas Software.

By comparison, about 11 applications passed the Windows 2000 Advanced Server logo test, 62 are certified for Windows 2000 Server, and 95 gained the logo on Windows 2000 Professional as of late January. Because Datacenter Server was released about six months after the other versions of Windows 2000, certification testing didn't begin until late September.