News

Microsoft Beats June Goal of 100 W2K Certified Apps

• By Scott Bekker
• 06/28/2000

With Windows 2000, Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) overhauled its software logo program. In the past, Microsoft used logo programs to emphasize momentum behind its platform. The Windows 2000 certification process emphasizes quality instead, defining strict rules for how applications install themselves, interact with the operating system and use disability features of the OS.

“We’ve crossed the boundary this month for 100 certified applications,” said Peter Ollodart, a group manager at Microsoft. “We’re at 110 as of today,” he said.

The official list of certified applications was updated over the last two days with about 35 new applications, and the list now shows 107 certified applications. The list is maintained by Veritest, which does the certification testing for Microsoft, at www.veritest.com/mslogos/windows2000/certification.

One high-profile addition to the ranks of certified applications was ERP vendor J.D. Edwards’ (www.jdedwards.com) suite of 13 OneWorld products. Another major application certification posted today was IBM Corp.’s flagship RDBMS software, DB2. Aelita Software’s ERDisk and FullArmor Corp.’s FAZAM 2000 tool for managing Group Policy in the Active Directory were among other applications receiving certification.

Certification for SQL Server 2000 and Exchange 2000 Server are right around the corner as well, Ollodart said.

Meanwhile, Ollodart says another 300 applications are in the testing queue at Veritest’s four testing facilities worldwide.

“I don’t expect us to ever get to 1,000 [certified applications], but I would say a couple more hundred over the next year is something that we’re looking at,” Ollodart said.

Ollodart also says the list of Windows 2000 Ready applications is growing rapidly. Windows 2000 Ready is a step below Windows 2000 Certified. It means a software vendor has tested to make sure its application is compatible with Windows 2000, and that the vendor will support customers who run the application on Windows 2000.

“We’re reaching the 10,000 mark in that area,” Ollodart says. “We’re feeling pretty good about the momentum. ” – Scott Bekker