Many operating system manufacturers have stared longingly at the high end of the computing market, where the big boys - and their big iron - dominate.
Not only is there a great deal of money to be made at the top, but there is also a certain amount of prestige to know that your software is being utilised for the most demanding computing tasks on the planet. However, breaking into this market is not easy.
Enterprise users` demands are stringent, and almost impossible to meet except for the elite few, such as IBM, Sun and Compaq. Up in the clouds of the top tier, constant uptime, massive transaction loads and superior speed are essential ingredients - price is not a primary concern.
Microsoft`s new suite of server operating systems are targeted at this market, in particular Data Center Server 2000 (see table 1). But this operating system has some serious hurdles to overcome before being accepted in the enterprise space.
"With four major revisions (Win 3.1, WinNT 3.5.1, WinNT 4.0 and Win 2000) and only seven years old, Windows NT is relatively immature by operating systems standards, especially when compared to Unix which was originally started at Bell Laboratories in 1969, making Unix a 31-year-old stable and industry-proven OS," comments Nqabayezwe George Sithole, senior pre-sales systems engineer, Sun Microsystems Inter-Continental Operations. "The enterprise customer looks for scalability and reliability in an operating system."
Market perception
Microsoft will have to overcome this market perception that its operating systems cannot perform to the standards that the more mature Unix vendors have achieved.
Other concerns about the new operating system, says Sithole, include security and the amount of bugs in the code.
According to a Windows 2000 case study by the Aberdeen Group, there are two types of enterprise users whose needs Microsoft must address - the traditional information systems (IS) manager and the dot-com IS manager.
These two groups have very different needs and expectations of an enterprise platform, and also maintain certain dogmas that Microsoft must challenge if it is to be successful in this market.
"In large enterprises there remains a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt about the 'enterprise readiness` of Microsoft`s NT operating environment. Many IS executives have heard that Windows NT servers scale poorly, are not reliable, are difficult to manage, and are hard to secure," says the Aberdeen Group.
"Yet, several interviews conducted by Aberdeen Group with large, Internet-driven dot-com companies paint quite a different picture: Windows NT-based systems are being used in a reliable, scalable, manageable and secure fashion in sizable Internet server farm environments. These sites have clearly overcome perceived NT scalability and reliability issues - and can prove that NT-based servers perform extremely well, are highly reliable and do an excellent job of handling Internet-based traffic."
(For the Aberdeen Group`s distinction between these two user types, see table 2.)
In an effort to satisfy user demand, Microsoft is following a policy it refers to as "scaling up" and "scaling out".
"Our approach to the enterprise - as it stands right now - is both the scale up and scale out approach," comments Ian Hatton, Microsoft Windows 2000 product manager, South Africa. "It depends on which part of the enterprise you play in as to which path you will follow."
The scaling up - typically more memory and higher symmetrical multi-processing capabilities - will be used to scale applications like Exchange Server for more load and users. Network load balancing and node clustering will supply the scale out path, which leads higher performance and reliability.
Combining the up-and-out approach will bring you into the 32x32x4 space, which could rival the big iron, an area typically dominated by IBM`s mainframes. "We are not yet challenging the high-end 390s," believes Hatton. "We are not looking at replacing the mainframes just yet."
Another player at this high level is Sun. "Solaris has more comprehensive resource management tools than Windows 2000; Solaris 8 is a full 64-bit environment that can support large computing-intensive applications, while Windows is still only a 32-bit OS; and Solaris is expandable to 64 CPUs, while Data Center promises to scale up to 32 processors," says Sun`s Sithole.
Player advantage
One of the aces that the traditional enterprise players still hold is 64-bit computing. Although Hatton says that Data Center Server is not a first generation product as it is built on the Windows 2000 code, he believes that high-end users will not be willing to risk Data Center on Intel`s first generation IA-64 Itanium processor, when it ships. This will give the 64-bit RISC players even more breathing room before they see Microsoft playing in their space.
On the topic of the RISC chip, Hatton comments: "We don`t need it - with Intel`s price/performance, the requirement for RISC has diminished."
It is most likely that the initial adopters of Data Center will be the Internet customers. "Quite frankly, I don`t think that anyone has the story that we have for the Web," says Hatton. "Our four-way and eight-way boxes are phenomenally cheaper than our rivals, which makes this offering very compelling," he says. "The 32-way load balancing is great for scheduled downtime."
Microsoft has been running its Web site - http://www.microsoft.com/ - on Advanced Server since January, and Hatton says that Microsoft.com has been the most available site in the world between January and August.
Its competitors in this space will most likely be the traditional Unix and Linux vendors. "There will be some consolidation in the Unix market," predicts Hatton, "and we will be taking market share away from them. We can offer better solutions at lower prices."
The Data Center is linked to Microsoft`s .NET strategy, and it is no surprise that the software ships with SQL Server 2000, Exchange 2000 Server, BizTalk Server 2000, Commerce Server 2000, Application Center 2000, Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000, and Host Integration Server 2000 (the suite referred to by Microsoft as the .NET servers).
Relative success
However, not everyone believes Microsoft will attain the success it expects in this new market. "By year-end 2000, between 3% and 6% of the 1999 commercial installed base of Windows NT Server will be upgraded or refreshed with Windows 2000, and between 45% and 50% by year-end 2001," states the GartnerGroup.
"Through 2001, 50% of mid-size and large enterprises will encounter new compatibility problems with line-of-business applications, non-Windows interoperability or network infrastructure when testing Windows 2000 operating systems; that number will drop to 25% through 2003. Through 2002, 80% of all Windows 2000 Professional migrations by enterprises with more than 500 desktops will exceed their budgets for time or money by at least 25%, primarily due to lack of proper planning."
Microsoft has addressed the issue of planning and compatibility through two separate initiatives. The Enterprise Services Framework provides a detailed breakdown of planning and building, managing, and preparation within the enterprise system lifecycle (see diagram 1).
The Windows Data Center program tackles the compatibility issues. "We will only sell Data Center on certified systems," says Hatton. If any new hardware goes into a Data Center machine, that machine will have to be re-certified by Microsoft`s testing laboratories. Compaq was the first to sign for the program, and has now been joined by Dell, IBM, Unisys and Hewlett-Packard. There are another seven or eight global partners rumoured to be waiting in the wings.
Hatton says that this program represents an entirely new "go-to-market" approach for the software company. "We have put in a process whereby there will be no finger-pointing between us and our partners," says Hatton. "We have signed a contract whereby we support their hardware, and they support our software."
The channel will not see much of the action in the delivery of enterprise-class machines to market. "The market will probably be addressed mainly by direct sales," says Hatton. "We will see only a handful of resellers selling these systems."
If Microsoft is successful in its enterprise initiative, the market landscape - which has remained quite stable for some time now - promises to look quite different in the years to come.
Table 1. The three Windows 2000 Server operating systems
Source: Microsoft
Table 2: Traditional vs dot-com computing
Source: Aberdeen Group, February 2000
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