Last night in his COMDEX Fall 2002 keynote address, Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates announced that Microsoft® Windows® .NET Server 2003 is scheduled to be commercially available in April 2003, with release candidate two (RC2) to be delivered to customers in the next few weeks. Windows .NET Server 2003 is a comprehensive, integrated and stable infrastructure platform designed to help customers reduce costs and increase the efficiency of IT operations. Building on Windows 2000 Server family strengths, the new platform helps customers extend existing resources and build a new generation of connected applications that improve business productivity.

Today at COMDEX Fall 2002, Microsoft Corp. announced that early testing of engineering enhancements in the upcoming Microsoft® Windows® .NET Server 2003 shows dramatic performance improvements -- two times the performance or greater across most workloads* -- in the server compared with previous versions. Performance gains continue to be validated by original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners with Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) benchmarks and other recently published tests. Early results indicate that Windows .NET Server 2003 will unquestionably deliver the speed and scalability that customers need in even the largest enterprise environments.