InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
July 20, 1998
The Hidden Cost Of NT
continued...page 2 of 3Net-Temps experienced three months of downtime on its NT Server before giving up on theplatform. "We have 40,000 people a day accessing our site, and NT was down weekly," says Strange. "If a video card went out, we lost the system. A cable would go out, and the server would crash."
Net-Temps estimates it lost $15,000 every hour that job seekers couldn't get through. "I can't even compute the costs when my customers--recruitment firms--can't get through," he says.
While Strange continues to evaluate NT for system enhancements, he says today's NT isn't any closer to the functionality of Sun's Solaris, which Net-Temps moved to.
Perhaps some customers are expecting too much from NT--after all, the operating system is still in its infancy when compared to OS/390 and Unix. Business demands are so intense that IT shops often must push technology to meet those needs. Maybe users are pushing NT beyond its limits and putting operations at risk, say industry analysts.
Peaceful Coexistence
MCI has adopted a strategy of coexistence to address this issue. MCI runs NT Server in places where it's most appropriate--departmental and middle-tier application environments--while continuing to rely on hosts and Unix servers for high-transaction applications, says Craig Ashapa, MCI's senior manager for NT deployment. MCI's most important information resides on Digital VAX VMS servers, he adds.
Ashapa acknowledges NT's limitations but works around them. The NT servers make up MCI's enabling architecture that lets desktop systems access the back-end servers. The NT domain architecture is set up so that if an NT server goes down, the desktop systems can still access the back-end servers. Homegrown failover software and hardware instantly moves work to the desktop systems if there's an outage.
Tippett Studio also uses NT in limited place. The computerized special-effects firm uses NT workstations, but has opted to remain with Unix servers because of the high availability, maturity, and manageability the platform offers.
Tippett uses Silicon Graphics Irix servers. Despite the high upfront costs of these machines, they're more affordable than NT servers when support requirements are factored in, says Jeff Stringer, IS manager for Tippett. "NT's not a true multiuser system," adds Stringer. "To adjust a file, I'd have to send someone to each desktop to shut them down while work commences on the server." With the Irix systems, system administration chores can be conducted while the servers continue to process graphics files.
Even companies that have routine file-and-print requirements are finding that NT Server isn't always competitive with more mature technologies. Bob Sachikiny, a VP with the Aberdeen Group, says a client recently evaluated replacing Novell NetWare with NT. But when company officials realized they would need five NT servers for every three NetWare servers, they decided to keep their Novell network.
Planned Enhancements
Microsoft isn't the type of company to endure low customer satisfaction. It's busy improving NT's availability and manageability in the upcoming 5.0 release, scheduled for the first half of 1999. Microsoft has also enlisted the help of hardware vendors such as Compaq and Hewlett-Packard and high-end system vendors such as Amdahl and IBM to add performance and reliability features to the NT platform through add-on products.
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Illustration by August Stein
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