Michael, investing isn't about what is better. Otherwise we'd be renting Beta format videos from a corner-store specialty video shop, instead of VHS from Blockbuster.
On this forum I seem to be one of the few UNIX folks that also works a lot with MS products. I think each has its place. The issue that all UNIX vendors must contend with over the next 2 years is what happens when NT does have the scalability, security, safety, interoperability, and performance, as UNIX enjoys today?
With true enterprise vendors such as SAP and PeopleSoft telling the market that over the past two years their "reference" platform (development and testing) has changed from UNIX to NT; can their "preference" platform (deployment) be far behind?
I'm sure that companies with the global reach of someone like GE, or manufacturing complexities such as Boeing will continue to run much of their systems on mainframes and big UNIX hosts for some time to come. Does anyone have authoritative statistics on how big the server market is at that end of the computing scale vs the rest, which might in fact have both UNIX and NT as options?
I just have to think that NT will obtain the stability required. The folks at MS aren't exactly stupid, plus they have the advantage of common purpose (not exactly a historic trend in the UNIX camp). So assume for a second that they will in fact get there. What else is going for them:
- more technical people are exposed to MS products than any other platform
- more application developers are making it their standard
Seems to be a fairly convincing story - a large group of trained people and a large selection of applications, some of which are first available on NT.
Vendors such as HP, IBM, Unisys, DG, and Compaq/Digital have a leg up. They can make money in both camps. Just seems like a good strategy, with no downside, to me.
Lets not forget about the legions of SCO/UNIX apps on Intel boxes of all sorts too. The anti-SUNW UNIX camp is equally interested in eliminating SUNW as a competitor.
These are interesting times for an isolationist company like SUNW. |
