July 21, 1997

Tech View: History Can Help Judge TCO By Sean Gallagher he latest catchphrase acronym to be inflicted on the IT market is TCO-total cost of ownership. We can probably blame the network computer hawkers for starting this one with all the statistical propaganda they spread about the "hidden" cost of owning desktop PCs. Folks pushing everything from network PCs to can openers are using the phrase as part of their market babble. The whole concept of TCO, when applied to any desktop hardware-be it network computer, network PC, Windows terminal, standard desktop PC, or the "managed" PC recently proposed by 3Com and its technology partners-is educated guesswork at its best and unadulterated voodoo at its worst. Considering that, aside from standard PCs, none of these platforms has been widely deployed enough to get a handle on what they will really cost to deploy, operate, and maintain, any claim s made in defense of any desktop technology based on TCO are purely speculative. But there is a readily available prognostication tool for judging how the new desktop technologies will play out. It's called history. Around the turn of the decade, 3Com was involved with another thin-client technology-diskless network workstations. They were desktop PCs with no onboard storage and a boot programmable ROM to load the operating system onto the local processor and get them onto the network. Sound familiar yet? Both 3Com's diskless workstation and a similar product deployed by Novell went absolutely nowhere. The reasons? First of all, standard PCs with their own storage weren't much more expensive than diskless systems-in some cases, they were cheaper. Also, network storage was much more expensive, byte for byte, than storage on a local hard drive. Users still needed technical support, and administrators spent more time managing storage on the server. In addition, because of their relatively proprietar y nature, they were quickly left behind by the rapid progress of standard PCs. Once bitten, twice shy. 3Com's latest strategy, in its partnering with companies such as client-management software vendor On Technology Corp., is simply to put management features on a network interface card (NIC)-giving existing and future PCs a set of "zero administration" capabilities similar to that of Intel's network PCs. But this strategy does have a few distinct advantages over network PCs-for one, IT managers can buy PCs from anyone they want, and upgrade anytime they want just by moving the NIC. Also, replacing a burned-out NIC is bound to be less expensive and simpler than replacing the motherboard of a network PC-I'm sure that factors into TCO somewhere. Sure, 3Com is hoping this will sell more NICs. But those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it.   Back to Labs   Send Us Your Feedback   Top of the Page

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