[Sussex] Improving on UNIX

[Steve Dobson]

Geoff

On 14 March 2003 at 10:09 Geoff Teale wrote:
> 
> Steve wrote:
> ------------
> > I think you've missed on important different. 
> 
> Very probably - 
> 
> "When I look down I miss all the good stuff,
> When I look up, I just trip over things"

I must remember that!
 
> True, but that tactic is based on the assumption that everyone is using
> Windows machines anyway.  It has worked very well on the desktop and now
> Microsoft are moving it to the server market.

A bad assumption.  In the server market Microsoft are far from the
dominant platform.
 
> YOu correctly point out that Microsoft don't dominate in the server market
-
> but they have, in the last 10 years, gone from 0% to a sizeable market -

True, but 10 years ago they weren't in the server market.  Once they had
the desktop market sewn up they had to find other areas to keep up their
growth rate.  They have been far less successful away from the desktop.

> they need to defend it to survive.

True.

>                                     If we can convince people to switch to
> LINUX  then there isn't a problem , but there are a significant number of
> companies who don't even consider any other option for an OS other than
> Windows.

And for each site that will only run Windows I bet I can fine one that will
not.

>           However, a significant number of those companies will happily
run
> Oracle on those machines (a number of them are our customers).  Oracle are
> big enough the IT directors don't question them - there is no pressure to
> switch to SQL Server.

Again true.

>                       What Microsoft are engineering here is a reason to
> use SQL server rather than Oracle - time and time again they've cut prices
> and integrated to gain dominance in a market in which they were a bit part
> player and then forced costs up.  Within the scope of the NT server market
> this is just another opportunity to boost their product on the back of
their
> OS.

Yet again true, but this time not as important.

If a desktop system crashing it only inconvenient for one users.  For the
company there would only be a small drop in productivity that, given the
dominance of Windows on the desktop, goes unnoticed (at corporate level).

But if a server does down whole departments suffer.  These things are
noticed.
CEOs start getting reports of slippage.  If the server that goes down was a
public server (say a pay checking system for approving orders) then CEOs
want
things fix and they want them fixed yesterday - or heads will roll!!!!

For Microsoft to gain big grounds in the server market they are going to
have
to prove that their OS is as stable and reliable as Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
OS400
etc have proved to be.  Even if Win2K is as stable as them now it will be
years
before the Microsoft can prove it.

Given the amount of new "application centric"[1] code that is added to each
release
of a WinOS appears to have I think that stability for the Windows platform
is
a long way off.  The "application centric" code, while a policy that works
on 
the desktop is counter productive in serverland.
 
> Wonder what the EU commision will make of all this..

To find that out will have to wait years.

Steve

1: By "application centric" I mean the code that is put in the OS just to
aid
   IE or IIS, etc