From: "Rich Gauszka" 

This probably has a snowball's chance in hell ( wonder what the pricing will be? )

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622129,00.asp

Apple Makes a Play for NT Orphans
By Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft Watch
July 9, 2004



Microsoft's competitors smell blood in the enterprise waters. They are
swarming around NT 4.0 like sharks. And Apple is among the school of
circling predators.

Like Red Hat Inc., Novell Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and other vendors,
Apple Computer Inc. sees a silver lining in Microsoft's decision to phase
out support for NT Server 4.0 at the end of this year.


To capitalize on potentially disenfranchised Windows server customers,
Apple is planning on providing an NT migration tool as part of the Mac OS X
Server 10.4 Tiger release, due out in the first half of 2005. Built right
into the server operating system, the tool also will enable users to
migrate from Windows Server 2000 to Tiger, Apple officials said.

The new tool will aid companies in migrating user and group account
information from an existing Windows primary domain controller
automatically into Apple's Open Directory. This will allow Tiger Server to
take over as the primary domain controller for Windows clients "and
even host Windows users' home directories, group folders, roaming profiles
and shared printers," according to Apple.

And with Microsoft retiring NT 4.0-it stopped supporting client versions
June 30 and will stop supporting the server version at year-end-Apple
thinks the time is right to try to win the hearts and minds of the
disenfranchised Windows Server base.

"If Apple chooses to initiate an extremely competitive
pricing/training promotional deal, then I believe they have the technology
and the marketing in place to mount a successful campaign to lure customers
away from Windows, Linux and/or Unix. If the price is right, IT managers
and C-level business decision makers just may heed the impassioned pleas of
their end-users who clamor for more Macs!" she added.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5