A bit premature, perhaps, but Microsoft has officially ushered in the .NET era with the release of its first .NET Enterprise Servers, such as SQL Server 2000 and Exchange 2000 Server. In a move aimed right at high-end rivals such as Sun Microsystems, Microsoft also announced the immediate availability of its scalability and reliability champ, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, which features support for 32 processors and 64 GB of RAM. Microsoft president and CEO Steve Ballmer says that Tuesday´s launch event marked the beginning of a new era of competition between Sun and Microsoft. "The .NET Enterprise Servers will start to erode the size of the market Sun plays in," Ballmer confidently stated before the launch event.

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