Slashdot Mirror
IDC: NT usage is mostly hype
zealot writes "This CNN story reports that International Data Corp. has done research on OS use in businesses and has determined that the amount of NT usage is mostly hype and marketing. It is typically only used for departmental infrastructure, and hardly ever for mission critical stuff. UNIX is still alive and kicking. "
From the IDC item:
"Media reports of Windows NT's acceptance have not given a clear picture
of where and when Windows NT is really being used."
"Media reports often leave the impression that Windows NT is being adopted
by organizations of all sizes for every conceivable mission and that
organizations are abandoning their investments in other operating
environments," said Dan Kusnetzky, program director for IDC's Operating
Environments and Serverware research programs. "However, when IDC shines
the light of empirical research on Windows NT usage, a different view
emerges."
And this summary from The Register:
"Presumably IDC means that Microsoft is putting this information out, and
it's largely going into the press, unchallenged and highly-spun."
The point being not only that NT isn't really making the enterprise
penetration that we have been led to believe, but that the IT trade press
is being at least irresponsible in the way they report on the issue.
And that assessment is the most benign of the possibilities.
I remember that at the time, OS/2 was catching a lot of flack for its heavy hardware requirements (needed 8 megs of RAM!); then reports that NT's were worse started appearing, and next thing you know NT is a 'next generation network operating system' being touted for its excellent security (and this was still quite some time before it was released). So am I right and NT was originally positioned (and written) as a heavier duty desktop operating system, or has someone slipped something into my coffee?
On a (semi) related note about Microsoft's sway over the press: when I saw the first book about using NT hit the shelves, I decided to time how long it was from that point to its actual release. It was just over 13 months.
Ok, I'm obviously on crack. I just saw a Microsoft banner ad at the top of the preview page. Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water...
The problem is that Microsoft, while trying to create a client-server architecture like Unix, has also maintained most of the consumer-appealing aspects of its Windows line. Windows was always a consumer-oriented operating system, so it comes as no surprise to me that a) people don't want to use it for high-end server tasks and b) that Microsoft hasn't done a good job with the server aspects. The fact that Microsoft is shipping a "home user" version of Windows 2000 whenever it does ship is ludicrous. It's the same basic operating system with more actual server-like utilities in the "Enterprise" version. Microsoft needs to quit worrying about appealing to Ma and Pa and start worrying about the actual server characteristics of its OS. When that's finished, /then/ go back and tweak the UI. This is essentially the position that Linux is in, and we know about the stability of Linux.
Where I work, we have both Unix and NT systems. We use NT as basically a file-sharing system for Windows computers and use Unix for everything else. Guess how often the NT machine has to be taken down for some reason or another.
At a recent seminar that I went to it was stated that 54% of all NT servers are used for authentication, file and print. There wasn't a figure for servers used to support MS or Citrix "thin client", but it must be fairly substantial.
This being so the number of systems running real applications can't be that great.
The guy who is quoted in the story, Dan Kusnetzky, also did the Linux report that came up with the 212% growth figure, but he also told me that IDC only expects Linux to grow by 25% per year for the next five years. That doesn't make sense, does it? He was also very sceptical of the figures for Linux installs, and admitted that IDC's methodology was not "efficient", and they only had two years-worth of statistically significant data to work from.
Other comments of his were more FUDdy, though - he believes Linux is "like Unix was in the early 70's" and could suffer from fragmentation.
Oh, and he can talk the hind legs off a donkey ;). He once talked to me on his mobile, in his car, all the way from his hotel to the conference he was attending in San Francisco - about an hour at least. And he did all the talking.
--
Barry de la Rosa,
Reporter, PC Week (UK)
Work: barry_delarosa[at]vnu.co.uk,
tel. +44 (0)171 316 9364
-- /. ID is lower than Bruce Perens'!
Barry de la Rosa,
public[at]bpdlr.org
My
We use SQL 7.0 here for high volume distributed transactions, and we're coming up to the rough edges of the performance envelope now on medium level hardware (IBM NetFinity 5500 PII/400's). The system is coping with high transaction loads now, and will cope with processing more than three million transactions in one single evening soon. Closer to the day, I'll let you all know the URL where you can see the public front end at work.
I seriously suggest that if you don't believe that SQL 7.0 and NT 4.0 can sustain high transaction load, you're wrong, and I have 57 servers that prove you wrong. Individually, these servers are not as high powered as a 14 processor Enterprise 6000 running Oracle, but then again, they're about 1/15th the cost in hardware alone. You pay for what you get.
In the production environment that I manage, I have some NT 4.0 boxes that I have not rebooted since I installed SP4, which means more than three month up time. If I was at work, I'd be able to tell you the exact days. These servers are hammered; in one case I have a bridgehead server which processes at least 100 disk I/O's every second sustained from 7.30 am until after 9 pm every day. It's still going strong after several weeks of continuous service (when it was first let loose on the production network).
As a production environment we also patch our Solaris servers as well. If you have Solaris servers that haven't been rebooted in a year, you have non-y2k compliant servers, and if I were you, I'd fix that. Uptime is meaningless come Jan 1 2000. Get used to it.
Andrew van der Stock
I'm reminded of a joke I heard back before NT 3:
Q: What machine runs NT best?
A: A slide projecter.
Yeah, I know, you've heard it before.
A coworker who is very experienced with NT says he can configure a department mail/file/web server so that it doesn't need rebooting more than every 3 months. I believe the guy knows what he's talking about. He knows what services to turn off that make NT slow/unstable; he also goes into the registry to tweak things.
After talking with this fellow, I believe that NT 4.0 has at its core a stable, reasonably good operating system well-suited for small to medium-sized department-level servers. But you have to be an expert to get that -- it doesn't seem to come "out of the box". So the results of this survey don't surprise me much: if you take NT beyond its capabilities, or aren't an expert at tuning it, you're going to struggle.
Let's face it, though: NT is popular. That is, it sells well. If many of these customers are finding that NT isn't all it's supposed to be, well, you live and learn.
The lesson from Microsoft, again, would be that marketing excellence is better than technical excellence.
(BTW, my NT coworker is also a longtime linux/unix user.)
--JT
A lot of media hype surrounding Linux doesn't make sense because nobody really understands it. Linux was almost completely unknown this time last year, even though companies like Oracle were already working on porting their software to it. Suddenly, it's become this huge bandwagon, which noone really understands, because there's been nothing like it before, and the media end up listening to so-called experts like Matrin Butler, who really know damn-all about Linux and it's capabilities.
b uted-database stuff, and it's all very cool. The reduced reliability of Linux on PC hardware is offset by it's lower cost.
:)
There's been so much hype thrown about by the media, presenting it as the Microsoft-killer and so on. For example, Linux is now being touted as a viable alternative to Windows on the desktop.
Bollocks, I say. Linux is nowhere near the point where it can compete with Windows on the desktop. It can compete with Windows NT in the server market, yes - As someone else pointed out above, Linux+Samba kicks NT's ass into a sling. In fact, Linux+netatalk also kicks Apple appleshare servers into touch. But, bring Linux to the desktop in the same way as Microsoft managed to do with Windows, will be a long, long haul.
The fact is, that, on the ground, people are going ahead, implementing Linux as a server for a variety of purposes, and ignoring all the hype. I've installed Linux machines as file, print, mail, web, and database servers. They require a fraction of the administration required by NT and are more stable and more powerful.
However, would I reccomend a Linux installation for the desktop or for a high-performance mission-critical server? No. I'd reccomend Windows NT workstation (or MacOS) on the desktop and a Sun Enterprise server for the mission-critical stuff.
In the future, this might change. Linux definitely has a future. At the moment, I'm doing some R&D into Linux/Beowulf/Clustering/High-Availability/distri
Anyway, the point is that there's no point in trying to predict what's going to happen with Linux. To forecast where something's going to go, you must know from whence it came, and Linux came out of nowhere, so the statisticians don't have any historical data. Add to that the fact that it's a completely new phenomenon - a free operating system hasn't never attained this position in the past, so the statisticians don't even have anything similar that they can use to make a model.
Everybody's getting all worked up, but it doesn't matter what anyone says - Linux is going where it's going and noone can really influence what happens to it, because noone controls it.
In fact, it's all rather cool.
Jack
My main job, first inside a company I helped found at the time but which has since moved to other markets, now as a standalone worker has been to replace NT machines with Unix ones in small to medium installations. Using either FreeBSD or Linux in place of NT has been a real breath of fresh air for all concerned. Much less hassle for me (on the remote admin side, with less trouble / easiser access) as well as for users who find that it just plain works, like an information managing appliance should.
So far I've seen people who insisted on NT giving up and switching to a Unix box (what I first recommended, but, well, they sign the checks).
Agreed, I so far only work with small setups (10 to 60 machine networks) but in 95% of the cases so far, I've moved NT from a central (server) to a leaf (workstation) position in the networks I work with. And every customer is just thrilled.
From my experience with both systems (although I admit to not being fully at ease with NT and outsourcing to a real NT person the hairy parts of the maintenance of those machines), NT is just what Windows9x should be, a reasonably evolved desktop system with a few server features bundled in, while Unix is a versatile high end system that just plain works whatever you throw at it.
NT is perfect to run office applications, serve a few documents and handle local (to the machine) mail (what you'd expect from a decent, simple, single-user desktop system). When it comes to computing, there currently aren't many solutions beyond Unix (unless you get to mainframe level where Unix just doesn't cut it anymore). Maybe small AS/400 systems would also be adequate, I haven't worked with these so far.
Just a few thoughts from the real world in France...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Although I wholeheartedly agree with most of the conclusions in the article, remember where it came from. Its straight from Sun World. The only difference between this and ZD's pro-NT stuff is this might be true ;)
Some people actually do run core business services on NT, although not many. And if you cut through the hype, most people don't run their core business services on Linux, *BSD, SCO, or any other x86 platform either.
There's a number of reasons for this other than "NT Sux" - x86 server hardware only has started to approach the price/performance of midrange hardware within the last couple years. Also, early versions of Oracle/NT were not very stable, and MS didn't come out with an enterprise competitive DBMS until a couple months ago (SQL 7). Likewise with Linux - the pieces are just now appearing.
Not to mention that most "core business" applications undergo years of planning and development, and have a self life of 10 years or more. VMS is still alive for this reason, and there's no doubt that a certain part of the Unix/S390/AS400 sales pitch is legacy compatibility. There has not been enough time for most shops to build for NT or Linux or migrate what they've got to newer platforms.
So, now that all the pieces are there, expect x86 to start getting midrange marketshare, but it's going to be slow going for either Linux or NT. (As was mentioned in the NT vs Linux debate, at $50K - $100K price point, there's a few more options than x86+Linux or x86+NT.) And, yes 390 will live forever.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I work with a number of customers right now that are moving their entire businesses onto NT. Some are deploying workstation and server across the enterprise. Some are deploying NT Server, with limited uses of Workstation. The primary use of the NT Servers is to run Oracle/SAP, which are these companies entire busineses. Two of the larger clients have about a 1000 users. They have chosen this route because the software, hardware and consultant costs of commercial UNIXes are incredibly expensive. An OS decision for businesses right now is like buying car insurance. You will eventually get into a car accident. Do you want to pay the highest premium possible just in case, or pay the lower premium and take your chances hoping that you won't crash? A lot of people choose to take the lower premium and gamble. NT is the cheap premium, it has cheap upfront costs. Cheaper upfront costs mean lower expenses which could result in higher profits, certainly higher monthly cash flow. Linux may be both, very low premium and the best insurance for your business. But most companies aren't even seriously thinking about Linux now. They are working on Y2K projects and other initiatives that started before the Linux hype trully got under way. Once they start to seriously evaluate Linux, it will be used more primary because it is cheap. History has proven that the best technology does not always win, price will win nearly everytime. That is the formula that MS has used for 2 decades now. However, I do not believe that anything will be the dominant OS moving forward. Higher market share for Linux will force MS to adopt true open standards. Adoption of true open standards will finally allow the use of any desktop simply because you like that desktop. Just like a car. Everyone does not drive a Japanese manufactured car, even though they were and still are reported to be more reliable than their American manufactured counterparts or have better technology. People will continue to drive Fords and GMs simply because they like the look or the upfront price is cheaper. Honda may go for 250000 miles and never leave you stranded, but it really doesn't matter to most people. Same thing with gas mileage. The higher the gas mileage, the lower your monthly/yearly costs for that vehicle. Yet people are gobbling up SUVs at an incredible rate because they simply like that vehicle. A station wagon or minivan would perform much of the same duties as an SUV, but people simply like the SUVs. NT is more stable than the press has previously led everyone to believe. Gartner Group recently completed a new study on this topic supporting that conclusion. NT is not as stable as Unix, most know that and the stats still bear that out. But NT is stable enough for most needs. I see uptimes of 99.9% or greater for nearly all the NT boxes I have seen. I haven't seen a long range study on Linux stability, but our test boxes have stayed up just as long as our NT boxes, which currently stay up neck and neck with our Digital(Compaq)Unix box. It wasn't always that way, but MS seems to be increasing the stability with each service pack. At least that's my experience, and most people I talk to have seen the same thing.
First of all, a small correction: XENIX was an early Microsoft product, but their first was Tiny BASIC.
A more serious matter: NT is not based on Unix, its roots are more in VMS. Read Helen Custer's excellent Inside Windows NT which explains the history in interesting detail. I actually like NT the operating system; it's the Windows architecture and especially the W95-look-and-feel subsystems that run on top of it that I find excruciating. I still use NT 3.51 as my primary desktop because the interface doesn't get in my way as much. (Fear not, Linux fans, I already have Debian running and it will be where I "live" once my project migration is done).
Finally, a broader point, fair is in the business person's lexicon, or else they will be saying hello to Mr. Tax Inspector or Ms. Prosecutor on transgressions of business law. As Mr. Gates himself discovered, somewhat to his astonishment, the authorities do take these things seriously, at some eventual point.
-------
Bill Gates Is My Evil Twin.
NT and Linux are about the same age
This is true, more or less.
and both are based on UNIX
While there are some influences from UNIX in NT, it is more accurate to say it is based on MicroVMS. The same guy that was the principal designer of NT was the same guy that was Digital's main architect for VMS.
Linux is often criticized for being based on UNIX, which has been around for about 30 years. However NT is based on VMS (which was based on RSTS/11 & RSX/11) and MS-DOS (which was based on CP/M which was based on RSTS/RSX). When you go back to the common ancestor, NT's lineage is also about 30 years. The most ironic thing about the 'N' in NT was that there was really nothing new at all in it.
Just how many of you knew what Microsoft's first product was? XENIX
Actually their first product was Altair BASIC. They didn't do XENIX until much later. It was a variant (AT&T licensed) of Version 7 UNIX. They did do XENIX before MS-DOS (which was a clone of CP/M) and they did copy the concept of heirarchial subdirectories from UNIX, albiet they used backslash instead of slash for the directory seperator (because CP/M and MS-DOS 1.x used slash for the command line parameter flag instead of dash as commonly used in UNIX).
I work with NT at work (and am an MCSE, boo and hiss if you want), but I also have a Red Hat box at home. It's nice, no question.
Here's a point that I think is missed: NT and Linux are about the same age! Both really got underway in the late 80's/early 90's (depending on your dating system), and both are based on UNIX. (Just how many of you knew what Microsoft's first product was? XENIX.) NT has made huge gains in the Enterprise market, considering it started from ZERO and is 1/2 to 1/3 the age of most flavors of UNIX.
Funny, how many folks here will poo-poo that accomplishment, yet praise Linux for it's growth.
Anyway, all I really want to say is this: MS is no more the evil empire than IBM was, or Commodore back in the 8 bit days. It's cool to hate the establishment, but ultimately it is just hot air. The market will change on it's own, it always does.
Also, if any of you owned Microsoft instead of Bill Gates and didn't try to co-opt or take out the cometition, you're either very noble or an idiot. That's why it's called business! Fair is not part of the businessman's lexicon!
If Linux (somehow) slays Microsoft and becomes the OS de jure in, say, 2004... what happens next? Will a bunch of folks, disguntled at how standardized Linux had to become to support all the hardware and apps out there splinter off and make yet ANOTHER OS?
Just my rant,
Markvs
...There are no such things as orbital mind control lasers.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Someone in the non-tech world finally reports what most of us have known for years -- that NT doesn't measure up. Quoting the CNN article:
- "Media reports often leave the impression that Windows NT is being adopted by organizations of all sizes for every conceivable mission and that organizations are abandoning their investments in other operating environments..."
Sad but true. I've seen a number of big corporations bite into NT (marketing) hook, (IT policy) line, and s(t)inker.It generally costs them market leadership and at least a few million dollars to recover, by the way.
- "However, when IDC shines the light of empirical research on Windows NT usage, a different view emerges."
As other posts have noticed, the technology press hasn't been very willing to expose -- or even research this. Why not? May I suggest a simple reason? M$ spends tens of millions of dollars to promote lies -- to the extent that 80% of the consumer and IT press have become dependant on the flow of dollars from Microsoft advertising. This makes it very difficult for the truth to buy mindspace from the magazine's powers that be.HP gets a similar benefit in reporting about printers and scanners, by the way. Good products (better than the crap from M$, at least) but most publications aren't that interested in critically reviewing HP devices because of the feared loss of advertising revenue.
Another reason to promote Linux, in my book. The Linux community excels at first exposing the problems, then fixing them or helping companies to get them fixed. Our loyalty is to excellence first, companies second. IMHO, the "truth will be told" mind set of Linux users and developers is the major reason we will succeed in overthrowing the beast from Redmond.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
NT and Linux are
Dave Cutler might disagree with that assessment.
NT and Linux are about the same age!
For this observation to have even the slightest bit of validity, you would have to assume that both operating systems started off on equal ground. This, of course, isn't true. Linux, at its outset, was the brainchild of some Finnish graduate student and was of interest to kernel hackers, not to the decision-making managers in IT shops (many of whom would have problems pointing Finland out on a map.) NT, on the other hand, was the ultra-hyped brainchild of a large corporation that already had an effective stranglehold on the desktop. Is anybody surprised that lots of people blindly went to NT? I'm not. Brand name, dude
If Linux (somehow) slays Microsoft and becomes the OS de jure in, say, 2004... what happens next?
Why does this have to happen? Why must there be only one operating system (or family of operating systems) in widespread use? The concept of an "OS de jure" is an artifact of the current mindset of many in the industry. The truth is that the ideal situation is many popular and interoperable operating environments, none of them being the "OS de jure." Open standards is what will make this possible, and this is why Linux (among others) is good for everybody
This is good for everybody.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
In my experience (I administer both NT and UNIX server) NT is fine as long as you don't throw high loads at it. We havea 4-CPU NT server (2 GB RAM) which still has to be rebooted from time to time because really random things break if we really bang on the server for a while.
... although after being used to Linux, I find the default software Sun ships (no compilers, etc.) on the anemic side ... I don't think a comercial UNIX can match the quiality and the amount of tools your typical Linux install comes with ...
...
Linux on the other hands, has been running in our office on an old crappy P90 laptop for 5 Months straight now handling web serving, web surfing and the occasional compiling of Gtk+/Gnome stuff.
Or Solaris machine which runs about 10 reasonably big Oracle databases, has been running without a hitch for something like a year now
Of course NT beams you straight into GUI land from Hell which positiveley blows chunks once you're comfotable with the UNIX command line