The following sections show these tasks in more detail.
Create a Web Site
For most businesses, having a Web site has become just as important as having a telephone. But the steps for setting up and maintaining a Web site may not be as obvious as those required to install phones. Businesses that use Windows 2000 Server have an advantage, however, because Web services are integrated directly into the operating system.
Windows 2000 includes Internet Information Services 5.0 (IIS 5.0). Because IIS 5.0 is a powerful, yet economical and easy-to-use Web server, companies that are just beginning to establish a Web presence can readily do so using Windows 2000. You can create content for your Web site using any editor that generates HTML, or you can use authoring tools such as Microsoft FrontPage® to simplify the site design task.
After starting with a simple design based on static Web pages, many businesses add variable information to their pages using dynamic content. Examples include putting the current date on your home page, or adapting how a page is displayed based on the capabilities of a user’s browser. This type of content uses more advanced HTML code, which developers can create using a number of code-editing programs.
To make it easier to develop dynamic content, IIS 5.0 includes an enhanced version of the server-scripting environment called Active Server Pages (ASP). ASP is a powerful feature that lets developers create Web pages that blend the Internet’s easy access and rich content capabilities with the transaction and data handling strengths of traditional software. Developers use ASPs as part of many of the solutions described below.
Create an Intranet
By moving your internal business processes from paper-based systems to an intranet, you can dramatically streamline operations. Examples include moving payroll, benefits, and procurement functions to a Web-based environment. By making tasks available from a central Intranet location, and accessible from a common browser interface, employees can spend less time learning procedures or filling out forms. By maintaining information in digital form, your employees will spend less time handling routine paperwork and can have faster access to information, resulting in reduced labor costs, and improved efficiency.
Because you can build Web-based front-ends for many of your existing applications, you don’t have to redesign your entire business to create an Intranet. With the application services and interoperability capabilities in Windows 2000, along with complementary development tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio®, developers can integrate information flowing to and from the Web with your existing software and databases, including those running on different operating systems.
Web-enabling applications is an area where the Active DirectoryTM service in Windows 2000 is particularly helpful, as it provides a central location to store common information related to users, computers, and software applications. Such a central repository lets developers rely on a single location for up-to-date information, and gives administrators a single way to manage network security and resources.
Another way you can use the Web services in Windows 2000 is to let your employees work with documents in the same way on the Internet as they do on your internal network. IIS 5.0 includes support for the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning standard (WebDAV), which lets IIS work as both a Web server and a file server. With support for drag-and-drop Web publishing and file sharing, users can work with Web documents in the same way they work with files on their local hard drive or the network. One way this can be useful is to make it easier to build an intranet site that your employees can use to collaborate with one another without requiring specialized client software or Web-based file systems. IIS 5.0 and WebDAV bring the richness of Windows to the Web.
Create an Extranet
A natural progression for many companies that set up intranets is to open up selected areas, such as portions of the procurement process, to partners. This allows faster, more effective partner interactions. The security and VPN features in Windows 2000 make it easy to create Web sites that can be accessed by selected vendors, but not the general public.
Create an E-commerce Site
For many companies, the ultimate goal of Internet-enabling their businesses is to create a way to serve customers online. With its application services, scalability, reliability, manageability, and security, Windows 2000 serves as a solid yet flexible foundation for e-commerce sites. Using Windows 2000, developers have the ability to create virtually any type of shopping experience.
Beyond helping you create a dynamic Web-based storefront, as shown in the Intranet and Extranet examples above, they can also securely integrate e-commerce operations with your company’s existing systems.
For example, e-commerce sites commonly let customers purchase products and check order status over the Internet. Ideally, these operations will fold in with existing ordering systems, rather than run on separate, parallel systems. Likewise, when a customer places an order, existing internal systems such as inventory, billing, and sales management systems need to reflect the transaction.
Beyond working with customers, Windows 2000 interoperates with your existing systems so you can efficiently manage operations behind the scenes, such as managing suppliers and shippers, payment collection and accounting, and collecting and managing customer information that helps you tailor your offerings to suit individual buyers.
Building applications that take advantage of new technologies as well as integrate with your existing systems requires flexible programming options. To provide maximum programming flexibility, Windows 2000 uses a component object-based programming model that lets developers use a broad array of Microsoft and third-party development tools to create applications and integrate them with existing software. The model is also programming language-neutral, so developers can use virtually any language they prefer.
Beyond programming flexibility, today’s applications need to work with an assortment of operating systems. Windows 2000 supports clients running on a number of operating systems, including NetWare and Unix. Microsoft also offers products for connecting servers running different operating systems. Microsoft Services for NetWare v.5 provides customers with a complete set of new interoperability services and tools for integrating the Windows 2000 Server product family and Windows NT Server 4.0 into existing NetWare environments. Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX and Microsoft Interix provides a set of additional features to Windows NT and Windows 2000 that allow for greater interoperability with existing UNIX-based systems in the enterprise.
Host Multiple Web Sites
With its greatly improved scalability, and new management options, Windows 2000 lets you host a large number of separate Web sites on a single server. A common example is hosting separate sites for different product divisions. Some companies, which are known as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or Web hosters, make a business out of hosting sites for other people and companies. These companies have particularly demanding Web services requirements. For any company that hosts multiple Web sites on a single server, the Web-services improvements in Windows 2000 are particularly beneficial.
ISPs can support up to ten times more sites on a single server using the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server operating system than was possible with Windows NT Server 4.0. With multiple IP address support, the Web services in Windows 2000 can scale to support thousands of Web sites on a single server.
In addition, several management features in Windows 2000 are especially suited to hosting multiple Web sites. For example, Windows 2000 includes integrated Terminal Services, which allow you to remotely manage a server from any machine running a Terminal Services client. And you can spread out the management workload by using the delegated administration capabilities in Windows 2000 to split up site management duties among several operators.
Scale Up or Out as Your Needs Grow
With the scalability provided by Windows 2000, you can start small and expand your systems as your needs increase. Technologies such as Network Load Balancing in Advanced Server allow you to scale your site performance by simply adding additional industry-standard servers to create a web "farm." In addition, Windows 2000 Advanced Server offers support for up to 8 processors and 8GB of RAM. You can be comfortable in knowing that Windows 2000 gives your applications plenty of performance headroom for the future.
Conclusion
Regardless of the type or size of your business, succeeding today likely requires that you connect with employees, customers, and partners using the Internet. This requires not just setting up a Web site, but also adding Web functionality to your existing business processes. Often it requires creating new software that integrates the Web to create new types of business opportunities. From simple Web sites to massive e-commerce applications, with Windows 2000, companies have the essential services they need to Web-enable their businesses.
