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Defining The Business Value Of Technology
Big Servers Or Big Clients?
Some new developments may send IT managers back to the network drawing board
By Stuart J. Johnston
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lient-server or network computing? The debate over the best model for enterprise computing got more complicated last week, following new product introductions from Microsoft and Oracle and a court ruling that could renew interest in the Java programming language. Vendors pushing the two architectures insist that their approach is the way to higher performance, easier management, and lower costs. IT managers are left to sort it out.Microsoft, an unwavering proponent of powerful PCs and client-server computing, last week introduced a database upgrade that shows it's capable of supporting some pretty hefty server workloads as well. As it did, Oracle, a long-time promoter of server-centric computing, floated the idea of a stripped-down database server "appliance."
Are the IT architectures represented by these rivals becoming increasingly different? Or alike? Maybe some of both.
Microsoft's client-server approach is looking more and more like the model advocated by IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems called network or Internet computing. Microsoft's recently released Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition supports thin clients, and CEO Bill Gates has begun talking about "megaservers"-the underpinnings of Net computing. The Internet is central to both approaches, and both sides say they can lower the cost of managing IT environments.
But there's still a sharp divide-a fact underscored last week when a federal court ruled that Microsoft must, at least temporarily, make its Java technologies completely compatible with Sun's Java or drop them altogether. Java poses a threat to Microsoft's huge influence on the desktop. Another point of contention: the growing complexity of Microsoft's desktop operating system. Windows 2000, scheduled for release next year, has about 32 million lines of code, a considerable increase over Windows NT 4.0.
Different Views
Users fall into both camps. Hannaford Bros. Co., a grocery chain in Portland, Maine, is looking at alternatives to PCs as a way to get off the Windows upgrade cycle, which requires software updates and more powerful PCs every 18 to 24 months. "It's out of control," says CIO Bill Homa. But Westcoast Energy Inc. in Vancouver, British Columbia, is embracing the Microsoft model. "We've basically piled everything on the client as much as possible," says Ric Liang, network architect with the natural gas transmission company.
Last week's release of SQL Server 7.0 was a milestone for Microsoft devotees. The upgrade, capable of managing 1 terabyte of data and primed for data warehousing, should ease some of the criticism about NT Server's scalability. (For a review of the beta release of SQL Server 7.0, see Feb. 16, p. 59)
Monster Board, an Internet company that runs Web sites for job seekers, plans to deploy SQL Server 7.0 to support growing traffic on the sites, which already serve 5 million users a month. The company is installing 17 Windows NT-based Dell PowerEdge 6300 servers, each with four Pentium II processors. It started down the path of Oracle-on-Unix but switched to NT a year ago. "You hear NT isn't as stable as Unix and doesn't scale as well, but NT has given us more stability, faster performance, and higher scalability," says Jonathan Lynch, Monster Board's director of development.
Oracle chairman and CEO Larry Ellison thinks he has an even better idea-get rid of the operating system. At the Comdex/Fall trade show in Las Vegas last week, Ellison disclosed that Oracle has begun talking with hardware vendors about the feasibility of building a server that runs Oracle's just-released Oracle8i database on a microkernel, eliminating many of the services that are part of Unix and Windows NT. The systems would start at around $10,000 for a four-processor machine with a disk array.
Who Needs An Operating System?
A full-blown operating system is unnecessary for some database applications and can actually hamper performance, Ellison says. Oracle has approached Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Sun about building the microkernel database server, which it calls Raw Iron.
Oracle customers were curious, but cautious. "In theory, I suspect you could really make a case for this if it means the database will perform really well," says George Rathbun, coordinator for the business support unit at Pfizer Inc.'s central research division. But Rathbun says he also finds it hard to understand "how I would live totally without an operating system."
Nellie Jefferson, director of IS with Elizabethtown Water Co., in Bridgewater, N.J., says Raw Iron could raise training and integration issues, and even increase costs if a company needs to add an application that Raw Iron can't handle. "It's a bold move," she says. "But to me, it's not necessary."
Raw Iron is one example-the Net computer is another-of Oracle's effort to deliver systems that reduce complexity by eliminating the operating system. "If this is successful, it will be an attack on the growing dominance of Windows NT," says Mike Schiff, an analyst at Current Analysis in Sterling, Va.
Ellison continued his verbal assault last week on Microsoft's client-server model, which for large companies can mean deploying dozens or hundreds of NT servers, calling it "distributed complexity." He also taunted Microsoft, offering $1 million to any Microsoft developer who can execute a data warehousing query against SQL Server 7.0 that's less than 100 times slower than the same query on Oracle8i. The catch: Oracle defines the terms of the query.
Microsoft dismisses Oracle's gamesmanship. "It's always handy to claim [client-server] is dead, as Oracle is doing, but we're trying to provide an evolutionary path forward," says Microsoft president Steve Ballmer. "We don't think our customers want to make this dramatic move away from client-server."
At the crux of the argument is Microsoft's desktop operating system and the demands it makes on PCs. Microsoft disclosed last week that Windows 2000 Professional, its next-generation desktop operating system, will require at least a 300-MHz Pentium II chip and 64 Mbytes of RAM when it ships next year.
Not every company blinks at those requirements. For the past three months, Westcoast Energy has been installing PCs that match Microsoft's recommended configuration for Win2000 Professional, and it plans to buy more in the first quarter. "By the year 2000, we'll probably have 50% of our user base up to that," says Liang.
Fully configured PCs give more processing power to individual users than NCs or thin PCs and ensure that users can keep working if the network goes down, Liang says. A few years ago, Westcoast Energy stored its applications on network servers-similar to Net computing -but the utility found that approach taxed network bandwidth. Now, he says, "we haven't guaranteed fault tolerance, but we've improved it."
Even Westcoast Energy has to be careful not to be caught off-guard by the Windows upgrade cycle. At Comdex, Dell Computer executives said they plan to recommend PCs with 450-MHz processors and 128 Mbytes of RAM for Win2000 Professional-considerably more than Microsoft's recommendation. "That would be quite a jump," admits Liang.
Thin Approach
The alternative to PCs are NCs and other thin clients. Microsoft has addressed that market with Terminal Server, which lets users of both thin-clients and PCs run Windows applications off a server. But it's an arm's-length embrace: Microsoft has repeatedly declined to give shipment numbers for Terminal Server and has little to say about the product.
Thin-client vendors, including Oracle's Network Computing Inc., may have missed a chance to circumvent Microsoft. Some purposely avoided supporting Windows, a mistake that resulted in lost sales opportunities. Federal Express, for example, considered a wide-scale NC deployment, but earlier this year opted for a mix of full-function PCs and thin clients that run Windows.
Sales of NCs are well below the initial projections of some analysts and NC booster Ellison. Dataquest estimates that fewer than 500,000 NCs will ship this year. The reason, says Dataquest analyst Kimball Brown, is that the full range of software needed to run NC environments isn't yet available. "As the programming model shifts, hardware will follow," Brown says.
Microsoft has been careful not to let its thin-client offering undercut sales of its full-blown PC environment. The company charges the same for Terminal Server client licenses as it does for Windows NT Workstation, a move that has drawn criticism from those who think thin clients should be cheaper.
Thin-client advocates aren't giving up. They say thin devices of all sorts will grow in popularity as Internet technologies such as HTML, XML, and Java catch on. The short-term failure of NCs "does not deny the fact that there is a trend toward embracing the Internet and Internet technologies as a way of reducing costs," says Steve Tirado, VP of Sun's network computer systems group.
Same-Size Tracks
That's where Java comes in. Java is a core technology in the Net computing model and could reduce Microsoft's control over the desktop. Last week's court injunction forces Microsoft to fully comply with Sun's standard version of Java, or stop using it in Microsoft products (see story). "Standards are like railroad tracks: I don't mind if someone builds a better locomotive, but I need the tracks to be the same gauge across the country or this stuff doesn't work," says Joe Greulich, director of MIS with Roberts Express Inc., a unit of FedEx parent FDX Corp. Greulich called the ruling "a good thing."
Can a renewed Java reinvigorate Net computing? That remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: There's no simple answer when it comes to picking the right architecture. Hannaford Bros. had ordered 1,200 Network Stations from IBM to replace PCs and 3270 terminals and hoped to implement Java-based applications. But a lack of Java apps and the need to increase server capacity prompted the company to put those plans on hold. Still, CIO Homa swears he won't return to the PC upgrade path. "A lot of that power is unnecessary. We just don't need it on the desktop," he says.
And Westcoast Energy, a firm believer in the client-server model, knows it has to be flexible. The company's database server of choice is Oracle-on-Unix.
Rather than relying on one architecture or the other, many IT departments are somewhere in between. Pennzoil Co. in Houston is a long-time Microsoft customer, but director of IT Britt Mayo says he keeps an open mind on issues of architecture and will go with any solution that provides the best performance for the cost. Says Mayo, "I'm not firmly in any camp."
-with additional reporting by Beth Davis, Natalie Engler, Mary Hayes, Sean Gallagher, John Soat, Jeff Sweat, and Clinton Wilder
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