Microsoft, Intel team on 64-bit finance app

Microsoft is working with Intel to deliver what they claim will be the first financial application running on 64-bit Windows.

Analysts said the development of a 64-bit version of Windows 2000 is a key part of Microsoft's ambitions to provide a viable alternative to Unix in the corporate data centre. However, this will be put on hold until the autumn delivery of servers featuring the 64-bit architecture.

As the first step in this development, SunGard, Intel and Microsoft have announced the availability of SunGard Panorama - the first 64-bit eProcessing system - which is designed for integrated trading and risk management. eProcessing has been optimised to run on 64-bit Windows 2000 and 64-bit Intel Architecture (IA-64) Intel Itanium processor-based systems.

The 64-bit technology will enable SunGard to deliver performance-intensive, scalable and reliable systems, the companies said. With the improved performance and addressable memory supplied by 64-bit Windows and the Itanium processor, Panorama users will be able to more rapidly capture, analyse and perform risk analysis on financial data.

Mitul Mehta, managing director of independent analysts Tekplus, said: "September will see the launch of high-end servers for IA-64. Microsoft will use these as a platform to make a big play in the enterprise and will have to produce an IA-64 story. Most vendors will announce 64-bit applications very fast."

Mehta added that NT as a platform was "eating into everything" and said that Linux, about which much has been made of its potential on IA-64, is attractive but still "three years behind NT". The real target for Microsoft is Unix in the data centre which has approximately 40 per cent of the market, he said.

With the development of a 64-bit version of Windows allied to the forthcoming Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, currently in beta 2 release, Microsoft hopes to provide a credible offering for the most demanding line of business applications, including ecommerce, data mining, online transaction processing, complex mathematics and high-performance multimedia applications.

Microsoft's Datacenter runs on large servers and is aimed at line-of-business and ecommerce environments. It offers all the features found in Windows 2000 Advanced Server and includes 64Gb of memory and support for 32 processors. It also claims to provide reliability features such as four-node clustering, process control and network load balancing.