Hi Rich. They report, I believe on 11/26 after the bell. Salah, ......
I don't have a verdict in yet. He has to crunch all of the numbers after he gets them from Merrill (seriously). But I suspect the answer will be .... <g>.
Dwight -- Ah yes.... Mr. DB. I can still hear him .... <smile>
Paul, and all: Now here's an "interesting" article. Why? Well you can see by the content, and moreso by the author (Laura DiDio from Computerworld).
Appears to me that "someone" has finally started some armtwisting of the media. Maybe ... perhaps ... who knows?
Oh Paul --- no, I didn't take profits before last Friday <ggg>. Fickle street it is, isn't it <s>. Although, I wish I cudda bought some more IBM, CPQ "and" DELL last Thursday ...
(INTC, DELL, CPQ, CSCO, ORCL, IBM and MSFT all lookin' good.... SUNW, ehhh... menza, menza ... ).
Anyway, here's a real "abnormal" (I mean "I" and you know it's true, but very untypical media copy for Novell) article IMVHO:
(Hell, if I were Novell, I'd try and get this thing printed up in the technology section of the NY Times or WSJ --- but then again, I don't work there <s> ...)
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NT Server doesn't come cheap
Laura DiDio
(News, 10/20/97)
Wary users with the sense to do cost studies are finding that moving to Windows NT
Server 4.0 will cost two to three times more than upgrading to the next level of their
existing network operating systems a point supported by several analysts' studies.
As a result, many of those users are holding off on a wholesale Windows NT 4.0
migration.
Computerworld conducted a random sampling of 15 Fortune 1,000 businesses, analysts
and systems integrators. It found that not only is the cost of an enterprisewide upgrade to
Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT Server 4.0 significantly more than that of rival platforms
to install and maintain, but some users got so bogged down, they elected to reinstall their
legacy network operating systems.
Windows NT 4.0, has far less horsepower than rival systems and can't handle as many
users on one file server.
And because NT 4.0 lacks an enterprise directory on the scale of Novell Directory
Services, it requires more administrators to manage it in large enterprises.
Additionally, its clustering capabilities lag behind Novell, Inc.'s IntranetWare and provide
only baseline fault tolerance and redundancy.
But NT 4.0 is generally considered a more robust application server. Users complain that
deploying Windows NT Server 4.0 costs more than expected for several reasons,
according to Evan Bauer, an analyst at Giga Information Group in Cambridge, Mass.
Unlike Unix or NetWare, Windows NT Server can handle only one task well, so more
systems are needed to support users, Bauer said.
TEDIOUS AND COSTLY
Worse, those servers require extra effort to manage. They lack remote control and
scripting capabilities, and their instability requires rebooting once or twice per week,
Bauer said, so engineers must visit every console frequently. ''Management is tedious and
costly,'' he said.
These revelations about NT 4.0 come as Microsoft launches a Windows NT 5.0
marketing campaign that claims the Active Directory will lower users' total cost of
ownership by 50%. But it won't ship until the middle of next year.
''I can't sell Microsoft's promises to my boss,'' said Nora Miller, information systems
manager at the Northwest Power Planning Council in Portland, Ore., which uses Digital
Equipment Corp.'s Pathworks as its enterprise network operating system.
''A wholesale migration to NT would easily double the cost of ownership compared to
our Pathworks network,'' Miller estimated, based on internal cost studies that measured
different price/performance ratios.
Phil Easter, a technology strategist at Greyhound Lines, Inc. in Dallas, said that according
to his calculations, the cost of installing IntranetWare, including hardware, software and
network management, would total about $410,000 for the first year. In contrast, he said,
a similar implementation of Windows NT would top out at around $900,000 because of
the need to install more servers and add-on management packages.
Easter also said the annual cost of management, maintenance and salaries for a Windows
NT Server network would be around $670,000. That is more than double the $275,000
price tag for comparable IntranetWare maintenance.
Easter said he based his calculations on the available volume discounts his firm would get
from Novell and Microsoft and the current technical specifications for IntranetWare 4.x
and Windows NT Server 4.0.
A theoretical cost study conducted by Rich Products Corp. in Buffalo, N.Y., gave Chief
Information Officer Mike Crowley the same rude awakening four months ago.
''I was shocked to find that it was significantly more to upgrade to Windows NT. As a
result, we're sticking with IntranetWare for now,'' Crowley said.
Our internal cost study showed it would cost us $300,000 in hardware alone to install a
600-client Windows NT 4.0 network vs. $80,000 for IntranetWare. It just doesnt have
the firepower at this point, he said.
Other users, such as Matt Rice, a senior network manager at USTrust Bank in
Cambridge, Mass., and Tony Macaluso, director of information technology at Multicare
Cos. in Hackensack, N.J., detailed the ''hidden costs'' of an all-Windows NT installation.
They said Windows NT 4.0 requires more resources to achieve the same performance of
rival platforms, although both have Windows NT Server installed as an applications
server. Both praised its performance in that capacity. ''I have 200 users attached to a
single 466-MHz server running NetWare, and we have no problems. No way could I do
that with NT,'' Rice said.
Macaluso, a longtime Banyan Systems, Inc. user, said his firm deploys StreetTalk for NT,
running on top of Windows NT Server as its directory. That lets him designate a single
network administrator to oversee 3,000 users at 60 sites nationwide.
''If we were to use the Domain Name Service in Windows NT 4.0, we'd need at least
five dedicated network administrators,'' he said.
Neil MacDonald, an analyst at Gartner Group, Inc. in Stamford, Conn., concurred. ''The
worst thing you could do would be to yank out every legacy server [and replace it with
Windows NT]. That's a very risky move that places too much faith in NT,'' he said.
Not so, said Rich Tong, Microsoft's vice president of Personal Business Systems
marketing. He claimed that in order to get a true figure for Windows NT 4.0 cost of
ownership, businesses must compare the cost of managing a Unix system and a NetWare
server in tandem.
''That's because neither operating system can perform both the functions of [network
operating systems] services and application operating system services as Windows NT
Server does. We found that a single Windows NT 4.0 system today provides businesses
with total cost of ownership that's 25% less than combination NetWare/Unix shops or
OS/2 Warp Server/AIX shops,'' Tong said. His figures are based on a recent Business
Research Group survey of 500 businesses partially paid for by Microsoft.
Jeff Dazell, LAN administrator for network services at Dana Corp. in Toledo, Ohio, said,
''It cost us a lot more for our Windows NT Server upgrade, but it was well worth it.
We're willing to pay more for NT because we get more functionality with the Back Office
Server suite.'
Sidebar
Fortune 100 tread carefully
Aberdeen Group, Inc. in Boston is readying a report on Windows NT 4.0 migration
initiatives among 10 Fortune 100 businesses that turned up many tales of bloated costs
and technical glitches.
Those flaws include the lack of a full-blown directory services database and management
tools and a paucity of trained Windows NT network managers. The combination of those
factors, the study concluded, at least doubled the cost of a migration from a legacy
network operating system to Windows NT Server 4.0.
Author and analyst Bob Sakakeeny said he did a series of in-depth case studies with 10
clients encompassing NetWare and OS/2 Warp Server shops, some of which also had
Windows NT installed as a departmental application server.
At least six of the businesses migrated or attempted to migrate to NT 4.0. Two others
decided against an NT migration after performing internal price/performance studies, and
the remaining two are still deciding. Although Windows NT Server 4.0 was particularly
lauded as a departmental application and database server, it also has some significant
price/performance flaws that are delaying its successful deployment as an enterprise
operating system.
In several cases, Sakakeeny's on-site case studies revealed that at the high end, migration
to Windows NT Server became so expensive and so bogged down with complexity that
at least two of the companies decided to re-install upgraded versions of their original
network operating systems.
Among the findings in Aberdeen's upcoming Onsite Migration Migraine report are the
following:
A major international financial services firm with more than 5,000 desktops determined
that it would rack up a 50% increase in management costs when it installed Windows NT
Server on the enterprise. And it would have to spend $2 million to buy add-on
management packages and third-party applications to compensate for Windows NT's
limited scalability. It stayed with NetWare instead.
A telecommunications company with 12,000 desktops and 400 servers that is in the midst
of migrating from IBM's OS/2 Warp Server to Windows NT documented a one-third
decrease in performance coupled with a 50% increase in management costs.
Another firm migrating to NT from NetWare saw a sharp increase in network congestion,
performance degradation and communications outages when it installed multiple NT
Domains. One network administrator reported that a ping test message sent to trace
network speed came back approximately 100 times slower than the same test on his prior
Novell network.
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Hmmmmmmmmmmm??????
Regards,
Joe...
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