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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (11243)	10/9/1998 1:16:00 PM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Excuse me cheryl, I have to ask your to clarify you following term: My guess is that MSFT will come out with a scaled-down version next year, placing it in more direct competition with Netware rather than Unix, so they'll be limited to the workgroup market. NT and Unix platforms are competing in the application server arena. Scaled down to compete with NetWare does not make much sense. You might not realize this but NetWare servers are out there services 2000-3000 users in file/print and other client/server related activities on Intel platforms that Unix servers could not perform on anything much much larger (multi-processor systems). These are environments that NT can't even dream of taking on without 5 extra servers. In fact, last fall I was involved in a project whereby the customer decided to move from a NetWare file/print environment to a Unix environment. After 1.5 years of Unix capacity and outage issues, the customer literally begged the us vendors to return them to NetWare 3.x! We convinced them to use NetWare 4.x and they have now returned to a high availability and stable solution. The Unix is now gone. So please dont compare NT to NetWare when you talk about scalability. There is no comparison. Keep your fight between NT and Unix on the right playing field. Also, Unix's scalability issue on NetWare (and some day NT) will be going by the wayside as SMP to 8+ intel processors is arriving very shortly. When that happens you can add another nail in the Unix coffin. I hate to tell you but as the Intel SOS's mature, Unix will be eventually squeezed out of the market. At least AIX and RS/6000 have an upward migration path into the very large enterprise systems like OS/390. The Sun and HP Unix will be pushed into the niche markets (like GIS) similar to the way the MACs have been squeezed into their little market space. I also hate to admit it, but NT will slowly but surely be taking the Unix marketshare away (with the exception of Linix which I feel will begin penetrating the desktop marketplace from MSFT WinX). Toy

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (11243)	10/9/1998 3:24:00 PM
From: keithsha	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Cheryl Perhaps you are just using old data. NT's scalability has increased 8 fold in the past 36 months. Companies such as Boeing, Chicago Stock Exchange, Compaq, Dow Chemical, Fidelity, General Electric, Merrill Lynch, Texaco, Saturn, etc. rely on Windows NT Server-based systems to support their most demanding computational, transaction, and I/O intensive applications. Look at independent testing by the Tranactional Processing Council tpc.org . Windows NT Server 4.0, Enterprise Edition with Tandem ServerNet Cluster software delivered 27,383 transactions per minute at a cost of $72 per tpmC. A Sun Microsystems Ultra Enterprise 6000 with 24 250-MHz UltraSPARC microprocessors, which delivers only 13 percent higher performance, but at a 50 percent higher cost per transaction. The Standards Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC)is an accepted World Wide Web server benchmark for measuring basic Web server performance. Their data on SpecWEB96 is at spec.org . For example, Third Quarter '98 SPECweb96 results report 3,151 pages access on a Aquanta QS/2 from Unisys running IIS 4.0 on Windows NT Server 4.0. The best results of 2,906 pages accessed were posted by Sun Microsystems were in the Third Quarter '97 SPECweb96 on a Ultra Enterprise 450 with Sun Web Server 1.0. You'll find similar results at Ziff Davis Benchmark Operation's ServerBench and any hardware vendors SAP competency center with the the Sales and Distribution ERP benchmark. NT scales and delivers the best price performance in the industry. As for Netware, look at the number of hardware vendors that submit results on Netware to the TPC for example. None, Zero, Nada. Too embarassing, I guess. Keithsha

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (11243)	10/9/1998 5:01:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 74651

cheryl - In Enterprise computing, RAS (Reliability, Availability, Servicability) is a requirement for any piece of equipment or O/S before it can be a contender. NT just isn't there, yet. I'm going to give you a gold star for this post. Maybe 2 gold stars. First, it is obviously from the heart and does not reference any marketing PR. Second, you have hit on what I believe is the critical discussion relating to NT enterprise capability (RAS). Third, the point about the need to defend the low end and move to the high end all with a single product is the second most important question facing MSFT both from a development and architectural point of view. Jack of all trades is master of none. Current NT Server can achieve decent reliability (99.9) but only in a closely controlled environment. First start with good hardware which can survive failure of key components (disk, NIC, fan or power supply) without telling the OS about it. Compaq, IBM, HP and DG all have systems that fit the bill. Then, only run a system which requires little administrative action - don't change network protocols, don't change disk configuration, don't add or subtract anything which changes the registry. There are many server sites which can fit into this model, but not too many interesting ones. In a general mix of application and 'file & print' servers, most testing I have seen shows reliability of between 95% and 98.5% available. This implies unanticipated outages of hours per week, simply unacceptable for any mission critical tasks. Microsoft is certainly aware of this and I believe they will be able to routinely achieve 99.9 reliability for first tier configurations but not until mid-2000 at the earliest. The project is late, indicating that it may have gone out of control. My guess is that MSFT will come out with a scaled-down version next year 100% accurate IMO. I believe it is accurate to say that MSFT was not prepared to deal with an effort involving nearly 2000 developers and 50 million lines of code, and that some serious realignment of priorities, methods, and development goals has been required to avoid meltdown. The current push behind Linux may give them some added competition, especially if lots of personal-productivity applications get ported or are written for it. The quest to get a clean, small, easy to use consumer OS out of the NT kernel will be a great challenge to MS. They have not only Linux to fend off, but they also have to replace Win9X as soon as possible or they will have osborned themselves in the commercial desktop space. The pressure will be on to jam features into the core OS to save time, the same kind of pressure that created the sloppy Win98 product. It will take a lot of strength on the part of the NT team to keep the feature creep at bay while still driving schedule. I believe that MSFT will need to regroup and develop a different internal culture and development methodology to address the RAS issues, and that they will probably need to develop at least 2 and maybe 3 related but separate NT products (or products intersecting in only a fraction of the codeline) to cover the range of the NT market. I believe that they will successfully do this, and that they will continue their growth into the enterprise space. Their defense of the low end is a little less certain but less important if they can hit the high end Unix space within 2 or 3 years. Thanks again for an interesting post, I must confess I was surprised but I like the new style a lot more than the old, please keep it up.

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (11243)	10/9/1998 7:00:00 PM
From: Dermot Burke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Here is one of the documented versions of the the much discussed ultimatum and the icon. For those interested. nytimes.com

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (11243)	10/10/1998 1:50:00 AM
From: stak	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

cheryl, IF, NT 5.0 isn't ready for prime time as soon as it is released, when would it be ready for the enterprise market to really be considered bulletproof. I know who knows for sure, but just in your opinion. WRT to RAS----If NT 5.0 isn't OK by intro of Merced then is Microsoft starting from square one again, or even slightly behind since, Merced is a completely new design(IA-64)? geez sure nice to read a thread without the 100's of gibberish posts from one individual per week. Again thanks not only for your answer but the many folks that replied to your post! tell me more...