Introduction to Windows 2003, New features of Windows 2003

Windows Server 2003 is a Network Operating System from Microsoft, introduced on April 2003. Microsoft released another modified and improved version, Windows Server 2003 R2, on December 2005. The Windows Server 2003 family is the successor to the Windows 2000 Server family, which was based on Windows NT Server. Windows Server 2003 introduces many new features and offers significant improvements to many features which were avalilable in earlier Windows Network Operating Systems.

Windows Server 2003 is a multithreaded, multiprocessing, multitasking operating system. Windows Server 2003 has a rich set of built-in APIs that make application development very easy.

Some improvemnts of Windows 2003 over the previous operating systems are listed below.

• Active Directory improvements

• .NET technologies support

• Windows XP integration

• Internet Information Services (IIS) v6.0 - An improved version of IIS.

• Industry standard support

• Interface and tool improvements

• Group Policy improvement

• Increased in security and built-in firewall. Most services in Windows 2003 are disabled by default.

• Improved disk management. New backup feature included which allows to back up open files.