With Microsoft finally ending support for NT Server 4.0 this year its competitors are getting ready for the rebound. Companies like Red Hat, Novell, Sun, and now Apple see this as a big chance to gain some market share. Apple is planning on providing a migration tool to help customers migrate from NT 4.0 Server in its upcoming server release OS X Server 10.4 (Tiger). Still Microsoft is bound to come out with some kind of deal before then to hold on its current customers.
Apple takes aim at Windows server users with the new NT migration tool that it is building into the Tiger server operating system.
Microsoft"s competitors smell blood in the enterprise waters. They are swarming around NT 4.0 like sharks. And Apple is among the school of circling predators. Like Red Hat, Novell, Sun and other vendors, Apple sees a silver lining in Microsoft"s decision to phase out support for NT Server 4.0 at the end of this year. To capitalize on potentially disenfranchised Windows server customers, Apple is planning on providing an NT migration tool as part of the Mac OS X Server 10.4 Tiger release, due out in the first half of 2005. It will be built right into the server operating system. (The tool also will enable users to migrate from Windows Server 2000 to Tiger, Apple officials said.)