IIS IS THE EASIEST WEB SERVER TO SET UP AND MANAGE

A central design goal of the Microsoft® Internet Information Server (IIS) was to make it easy to set up and manage. Current Web server offerings, such as Netscape's, are much more difficult to get started. For example, because IIS was designed specifically for Microsoft Windows NT™ Server, it takes advantage of the operating system services that administrators use regularly and are familiar with, such as Performance Monitor, User Manager, and File Manager. Netscape's Web server does not take advantage of these services and, therefore, is much more difficult to administer. In addition, because it cannot take advantage of the tools administrators are already familiar with and use every day, Netscape's Web server requires additional training.

Managing user accounts with IIS is also easier and more secure than with Netscape's server. Because IIS is tightly integrated into Windows NT Server and the Windows NT Directory Services, only one user account database is required for a customer's entire intranet. Netscape requires at least two databases---one for the operating system and one for every single Web server installed. The challenges of keeping user accounts synchronized explodes with each new Web server added to customer intranets.

To meet the objective for ease of management, a Web server should be integrated with the underlying network, should adopt the user database already defined by the network administrator, should not create a new user account database for every server on the intranet, and should never recommend that the administrator turn off security when adding multiple users. Netscape's offerings fail on all these counts. However, IIS delivers what customers seek-- ease of management while maintaining security.

The end result is that customers running Internet Information Server spend more time taking advantage of the Web-based solutions IIS can deliver and less time performing the rudimentary administration imposed by Netscape.

IIS OFFERS THE BEST PERFORMANCE, RELIABILITY, AND SECURITY

Microsoft focused a great deal of energy on making IIS the best performing Web server available. Because of that, IIS is the fastest Web server available on the market today. Netscape's "second generation" Web server does not perform nearly as well as IIS. In a benchmark test of IIS and Netscape® Web servers done by Haynes & Company/Shiloh Consulting using the industry-standard Webstone 1.1 Benchmark (135K), IIS performed up to five times faster than Netscape.

One of the reasons that IIS performs so well is that Microsoft is able to concentrate all of its development resources on one operating system platform, Windows NT Server. Companies like Netscape that try to support applications on multiple operating systems, such as Windows NT Server and the various flavors of UNIX®, are often forced to cut corners and develop to the least common denominator. They simply cannot spend the time and effort to customize their application so that it takes advantage of all the advanced features that an operating system such as Windows NT Server provides. Some of the Windows NT Server features IIS supports that Netscape does not include:

• Support for advanced OS application interfaces-improves the performance and scalability of applications.
• Integrated Directory Services-provides single logon to all applications across the enterprise as well as easy user management.
• Integration with Windows NT Servers File level security-provides easy and secure management of file access.
• Integration with the tools that come with the operating system-such as user manager and performance manager.

In addition, IIS is designed to take advantage of the server version of Windows NT and will not run on Windows NT Workstation. Why? Windows NT Workstation is designed and optimized to be a desktop workstation operating system, optimized for performance running applications such as Microsoft Excel, CAD/CAM and email. Unlike Windows NT Server, it simply does not include many of the key features required by high performance network server applications. These applications require features such as scalable security, fault tolerant disk stripping, integration with Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS), and remote dial-in capability. Windows NT Workstation, while an extremely robust operating system, is not intended to be used as a server operating system. Windows NT Server is made for applications like IIS.

IIS is extremely reliable. Besides taking advantage of the inherent dependability of Windows NT Server, with features RAID Disk support and UPS support, IIS was also tested extensively to make it as reliable as possible in its first release. Here are a few examples of how Microsoft tested IIS:

• IIS was in a broad beta test for over five months, with almost 30,000 customers receiving the beta before it was released on the Internet.
• IIS has been running the Microsoft Web site at, http://www.microsoft.com, one of the 10 busiest sites on the Internet, since June of 1995.
• While still a beta product, IIS has been used for several Web sites as a production server and has been chosen for several high profile, high volume sites such as the Oscars and NBA sites.

Of course, IIS lets customers choose the hardware platform that meets their needs. Like Windows NT Server, IIS is hardware-independent and supports more than 4,500 systems, including x86, RISC, and multiprocessor machines.

IIS PROVIDES THE BEST PLATFORM FOR A NEW GENERATION OF WEB APPLICATONS

The new generation of Web applications requires a solid foundation that not only supports existing standards, such as CGI and Perl, but should also provide a high-performance interface for creating Web extensions and applications. Of course, IIS supports existing Web standards. But it also incorporates the open, high-performance Win32® -compliant Internet Server API (ISAPI) for creating the next generation of dynamic Web applications. Tests show that ISAPI-based applications are up to five times faster than CGI-based applications, and up to three times faster than NSAPI-based applications (Netscape's proprietary applications interface), an API that is not even supported on the most widely used UNIX Web-site platform, BSDI (Berkeley Systems Development, Inc.). With more than five million Win32 developers in the industry today (compared to the 8,000 NSAPI developers), next generation applications built on ISAPI will soon follow. See below for a Benchmark (135K) of ISAPI vs. NSAPI done by Haynes & Company/Shiloh Consulting using WebStone 1.1. Simply put, IIS is the fastest Web server application platform available today.

IIS has received strong industry support from the developer community because you can utilize any of several available 32-bit Windows based development tools to create ISAPI-based applications. This includes Microsoft Visual Basic®, Visual C++®, Borland®, and many others. In other words, you can use the tools you already have or you can use new tools that best suit your needs. It's your choice. As a result, the millions of Win32 developers in the industry today can take advantage of the knowledge they already have and use the tools they choose.

IIS also provides the easiest and fastest way to publish database information on the Web via the Internet Database Connector (IDC), Which is included free of charge with IIS. Because IDC is based on the high-performance ISAPI rather than CGI, database access speeds to industry standard databases like Microsoft SQL Server, ORACLE®, Informix®, SYBASE®, and other ODBC-compliant databases are much better. Netscape doesn't currently offer a similar tool; users must create their own CGI application to access the information. Netscape touts native database support, but these capabilities are in a product That is yet to be released. In fact, this product is not yet even in beta (the Livewire product isn't expected to be available until the summer of 1996). It is difficult to compare a shipping product to a product that isn't yet publicly available.

©1996 Microsoft Corporation