To all:
The following is a post from aol's novl board. The writer is an informed person who knows the industry well and, although bullish
on novl, presents a balance view point. I read his posts with great interst!
The hyperlink is to Aberdeen site, posted for us earlier by...
what a poor memory i have! <GGG> Thanks anyway, whoever you are. :-)
seren.
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Subject: Aberdeen link clarification, etc.
Date: Sun, Feb 8, 1998 17:04 EST
From: Ida5683
Message-id: <19980208220501.RAA12217@ladder03.news.aol.com>
RDEMONEY:
Your Aberdeen link went right back to the original MF/Novell message that wasn't linked.
In any event, here is the link NT Case 41 aberdeen.com
As the song goes "there's a kind of hush all over the NT world tonight" as the ugly truth about NT's failures and shortcomings is finally being brought to light....
Folks, over the next 1-2 years expect to read more and more NT disaster stories. Gates can't hide anymore. When he tried to take on the NOS market he felt he could bluff his way by using NT as an Trojan Horse that swept the application server market. Higher execs have been overly mesmerized with the power and Microsoft - moreso because of their grip on the desktop than anything else - that's all these execs understand - which is saying very
little.
Gates will need much more than UIS and Compaq/Digital to clean up the NT act. I have said this before....I wouldn't be surprised to see Compaq and Novell enter into a more defined alliance or partnership. Remember, Compaq has a long history of breaking with the Wintel club - they made a big splash with AMD and Citrix chips recently. Look for more diversification in their NOS focus. COMDEX "Connecting Points" was a resounding success which did not
go unnoticed. Compaq leading the charge behind Netware 5.0 into Novell's channel for '98 and beyond??? With NDS already in place and MS out to lunch with Active Directory until at least mid/end '99 - my guess is some of the biggest pressure to give away NDS for free with Netware 4.11 and 5.0 installations could come from Compaq.
Wait for Novell's clustering solutions to rollout soon. This is extremely important technology which will go hand in hand with their network services strategy as they begin to rollout 5.0 late this spring.
As for Aberdeen, here's some of the key "NT Disaster" points to focus on. Keep in mind that this same story is being played out ALL across corporate-IT/IS-America. The NT disaster chorus is just beginning to sing.....
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Migration Plans
The Company's call center development group began the transition to NT Workstation in the Spring of 1996, and to NT Server in early 1997, with the full migration to be completed by mid-1997. The project missed its deadline. Although some 70% of the migration is completed, the last 30% is now considered to be so difficult that the IS management is no longer
willing to predict when the project will be complete.
The call center operations group started the transition at the same time, with the additional implementation of NT SQL Server as well as NT Workstation and NT Server throughout the operation.
While other companies have implemented NT Server at the workgroup and departmental level as application or database servers, few have implemented NT as the network operating system of choice across multiple domains. However, NT was being introduced at the Company as the sole operating system for the desktop, LAN server, application server,
database server and communications server. Truly, Microsoft's dream of running everything with a total Microsoft solution.
Migration Results
The impact of the migration completed to date on the call center's IS budget and management has been profound - a one-third decrease in performance accompanied by a fifty-percent increase in management costs. This does not include production time lost because of workstation freezes, transmission drops, or the constant re-booting needed to keep the server operational.
From a very stable environment, the IS staff now report chaotic conditions which have only abated modestly over the months since the migration started.
Production Problems
No matter how fast the Aberdeen OnSite Analyst wrote, the litany of problems as described by the Company's IS staff were too numerous to detail. However, describing a few low-lights gives the essence of the myriad problems encountered:
The most stable of the NT Workstations now require "only" two or three re-boots per day. Irrespective of the problems encountered, whenever a workstation freezes, the Microsoft technical support group recommends a re-boot. The call center operators call this "Microsoft's [expletive deleted] three-fingered salute - control/alt/delete."
Since transmission of transactions is of paramount importance to the Company, the intermittent slowdowns, random packet drops and inexplicable time-outs of routers, increased congestion due to garbage packets, etc., is of serious concern. To date, neither the Company's nor Microsoft's technical experts can identify - let alone correct - the problems.
The actual number of end-users is declining, but the number of "domain engines" (NT Servers, concentrators, routers, etc.) has increased due to NT Server's inability to service more than modest numbers of end-users.
Trouble tickets are up dramatically and new staff have had to be hired to respond, but facts are scarce since the help desk has stopped issuing its monthly customer service level reports because of "embarrassment."
The problems with the SQL Servers were so numerous that they filled four
pages of edited notes. A few are summarized in Table 1. IS' inability to recommend corrective measures and make changes has caused enormous frustration, and has led to an exodus of skilled engineers. Given the tight market for skilled technical staff, it has
been necessary to replace lost personnel with junior level engineers - furthering the NT migration problems. This gradual degradation of skill levels was described as a potential "death-spiral."
Table 1: SQL Server Problems Documented by the Call Center IS Staff
Issues with database crashes, resulting in database rebuilds requiring
hours or days to recover.
Database corruption is much more frequent than desired or expected, and recovery is time consuming and results in downtime and loss of productivity.
Responsiveness to known product bugs/limitations has been poor. Issues which have been known for some time still do not have a fix released over the past three
micro-revisions.
Much of the product is viewed as inadequate or immature - including cache management, referential integrity, replication, messaging, log file management, native SQL code debugging tools, error messages, and proactive notification of critical system problems.
Technical support often recommends rebooting either SQL Server or NT to resolve issues.Concern over the knowledge, responsiveness and effectiveness of Microsoft technical support.
Advance communications from technical support on issues such as known problems are missing.Concerns expressed by technical staff concerning the scalability and performance
of the product, especially when compared with other DBMS products on the market.
Concern with single platform support (the Company is a multi-platform DCE).
Concern with Year 2000 compliance.
Source: The Company, August 1997
Aberdeen Conclusions
The concept of a smooth migration of the scope and size instituted by the Company is illusionary. Problems always emerge, schedules are delayed, and staff comfortable doing things "their way" rebel at the change. Thus, IS' first complaints about the move to Windows NT were taken with a large grain of salt.
But, at considerable risk to their jobs, the IS staff Aberdeen has been talking with have fully documented their woes, and by any objective measure the migration pain they are suffering goes way beyond the pale. While this report captures the "plaintive wail" of frustration emitted by the IS staff who have been planning and implementing this migration over the past two years, it doesn't capture the level of pain they feel.
Based on hundreds of in-person interviews with senior executives in major businesses and organizations, Aberdeen has come to understand how effective use of technology can vastly improve operations. One critical issue often ignored is the need for a delicate balance between the roles of the business executives and IS executives in the development of an IT
infrastructure for the enterprise. One simplistic finding is that technology implementations go well when the business managers determine what is needed to improve operations, while the IS managers determine how IT gets implemented to support those business needs.
For the Company, the senior business executives decreed both the what and the how. They made a business decision to go with Microsoft irrespective of its various products' strengths and weaknesses, assuming all were "good enough" to meet the business' needs. The decree, in effect, tied IS' hands and prevented it from finding the best solutions
available - and now IS finds it politically incorrect to make their bosses aware of the massive problems the decree has caused.
It is quite possible that this 1995 purely business decision as currently being implemented will have a material impact on the Company's operations and bottom line in 1998. For a Company that has been studied by scores of business school students as a successful example of David beating Goliath with advanced technology, the breaking of the
decision-making balance between its technical and business groups could lead to a sadder chapter.
Ida5683 |
