I suspect that the problems with triggers may be because prior to SQL 2000, if a trigger (on a table with IDENTITY) happens to insert a record into another table that also has an IDENTITY column, you could only get the value of the last identity value generated which, in this case, would be the insert done by the trigger. This is still the case if you use @@IDENTITY.

However, SQL 2000 introduce a function called SCOPE_IDENTITY( ) which will give you the correct result.

Replication did present some issues in the past depending on what you were trying to do. SQL 2000 can now be told to manage identity ranges for subscribers who are doing inserts (e.g. queued subscribers).

I am not sure what issues your standards team are referring to wrt synchronization. I cannot think of any particular issues here (past or present).

And hot spots...well SQL 6.5 definitely did have some issues here but that was not so much to do with identity. It was more to do with system inserting lots of records into the same page (e.g. for a similar value of a clustered index). I don't observe any particular problems with this with SQL 2000 (or in SQL 7)

Have a read of book on line. It has quite good descriptions of the new features.

Cheers

Stephen