Keithsha,
Just ensure that you realize what IT shops are starting to realize. Here is the UP-TO-DATE news on the Chicago Merc. By the way - notice the date of this article compared with your Microsoft website article. You wanted a line-of-business example? This one even shows that when a company wants a reliable, secure, scalable, and performance driven line-of-business solution they look to Novell.
(PS - Try reading the whole thing before again pulling the foot out of your mouth from your following statement to me ...
Would the Merc ever trust their real business to Netware? Of course not. Netware is a toy and since file and print are not mission critical not a great deal of risk using it for that. Across town, the Chicago Stock Exchange standardized its trading systems on Windows NT4.)
(Computerworld 10/05/98)
Chicago Merc trades OS/2, NT for NetWare
Sharon Gaudin
IT executives at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, one of the largest trading floors in the
country, are planning to overhaul their real-time trading system in a bid to increase trading
volume, help traders make smarter decisions and bring in more profits.
The plan includes swapping the exchange's IBM OS/2 servers and most of its Microsoft Corp.
Windows NT servers for Novell, Inc.'s NetWare 5.0, moving to a 100% IP-based network,
buying servers, replacing a Token Ring network with an Ethernet network and replacing about
950 PCs.
All of that should slash service and support time, get applications developed faster and speed
information and analysis to the trading floor. Dropping OS/2 in favor of NetWare also will make
that part of the system year 2000-compliant.
"Say your average technician makes $150,000 a year with salary and benefits and office
space. If that technician could focus on development, instead of just service, that would be
$150,000 worth of development you didn't have before," said Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst at
International Data Corp. (IDC) in Sarasota, Fla. IDC is a sister company to Computerworld.
"This should allow our traders to trade smarter, make more money and increase our volume.
And volume is what funds the exchange," said Michael Salvador, who, as the CME's lead
network engineer, is often information technology's liaison with the traders. "When they need
information, they can't wait 10 seconds. The market could completely change in 10 seconds,
and then they're losing money," Salvador said.
UPPING TRADING SPEED
The overhaul at the CME, one of the country's largest marketplaces for trading futures
contracts and options on futures, still needs final board approval. But John Hart, director of the
company's MIS department, said approval is likely, adding that he hopes to get started on the
yearlong project by earlyDecember. The servers and software alone will cost $600,000, he said.
The CME expects to increase trading speed even though it will have fewer servers, said Jeff
Miller, the exchange's senior enterprise network engineer. Twelve to 14 NetWare servers will
replace 20 to 25 NT servers and 40 OS/2 servers.
Fewer NetWare servers can do a better job than the previous slew of servers because NetWare
scales better, handles more users and is easier to manage, Miller said. The extra speed and
increased capacity will let Miller deliver analytical tools and spreadsheets to the traders —
something they have been asking for, but that the current system hasn't been able to handle.
"NetWare 4.0 would support more users than NT 4.0, and NetWare 5.0 will support even more
and be quite a bit faster than that," Miller said.
He also said the switch in operating systems should slash the time IT spends on support calls.
Right now, Miller said, he has six technicians who spend 100% of their time on service and
support. He expects that to drop to 30%.
Furthermore, the exchange's eight IT executives spend about 70% of their time picking up
support calls that are too complicated for technicians. That should drop to 10% or less, leaving
them much more time for application development, Miller said. Salvador and Miller said their
support headaches will be eased by implementing Novell Directory Services (NDS), which was
designed to track various client operating system components from one central server, and
Zenworks, a remote administration tool that lets IT workers do diagnostics, maintenance and
software distribution from their own desks.
The CME probably also will use Novell's NDS for NT 2.0 tool, which replaces NT's domain
system with NDS. Miller is interested in checking out NDS for Solaris as well.
NDS automatically updates the central database of all clients' settings across the network,
whereas NT's domains must be manually managed on each server. With NDS on most of its
servers, the CME will have an umbrella directory to manage much of its system from a central
point, Miller said.
Miller said he also expects to save time in desktop setup.
"With Zenworks and NDS, we could push all the software down and do most of the
configurations from one place. ... We wouldn't be running all over. That could save ... easily
months and months of work time," Miller said, referring to the 950 new PCs that will be coming
in.
Toy
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