n the decade or so since they escaped the death grip of IBM's mainframes, the government's computer leaders have put open systems in the same category as motherhood and apple pie. For every manager who bemoaned the loss of IBM's cradle-to-grave technical support or found that open systems could tempt malicious hackers, there were packs of cheerleaders touting the technology's flexibility, low cost, technical agility and vendor independence.
Because the label can mean different things to different people, open systems are easy to like. To a technical person, "open system" is synonymous with the Unix operating system. Since Unix was developed in the early 1970s, it has been adopted by thousands of hardware and software companies, other businesses, government agencies and organizations. Many of them modified it for their own purposes, and the widespread sense of ownership is one reason people call Unix "open."
Today's Unix runs on everything from low-end PCs to multiprocessor computers with the power of a mainframe. But it is primarily used as an applications server in the client-server systems that are becoming the lifeblood of federal agencies. The popular databases from Oracle Corp., Informix Corp. and Sybase Inc. initially ran only on Unix. Many corporate Internet servers and document management systems are Unix-based too. At its core, Unix is neither pretty nor easy to use, but that's rarely a problem for the average computer user who does not have to deal with the server operating system.
Diversity Is a Weakness
Unix was developed by AT&T Corp. but
licensed to other computer companies as well as individuals and businesses. The result: dozens of flavors that are not interchangeable. IBM's Unix is called AIX, Hewlett-Packard Co. sells HP-UX and Sun Microsystems Inc. sells Solaris. Not all Unix comes from computer makers. For example, the Santa Cruz Operation Inc. sells its UnixWare for PCs and more powerful computers.
Federal agencies and other Unix users would benefit from being able to exchange one server or client-server accounting software system for another, as their needs dictate. Indeed, such portability is one of the common definitions for openness of systems. More or less interchangeable parts for a system give the customer leverage in the marketplace and promote healthy competition, the reasoning goes.
So users repeatedly have sought standardization of the Unix core. One such effort is a federal standard called Posix. But the standardization drive has been a chronic underachiever, because federal rules are out of fashion even inside the executive branch and standardization leads to a marketplace where buyers must do without the latest bells and whistles. The fizzling of the standardization movement has helped set the scene for the 1997 definition of open systems: Unix or Microsoft Windows NT.
A visitor from Mars might have difficulty understanding how NT, a proprietary operating system available only from the world's largest software company, fits the definition of "open." It's easier to comprehend if Windows NT is seen as a server operating system that competes with AIX, Solaris or HP-UX and runs similar applications software. Indeed, Oracle and Informix are among the many big-name companies that are racing to embrace NT as a good platform for their applications software.
Until recently, NT was not much of a competitor for Unix. It lacked power and flexibility. Even today, Unix adherents will tell you NT isn't ready to run enterprise applications-an agency's financial systems, for example. These mission-critical applications require a more robust operating system than a simple office network that carries electronic mail and printer jobs.
Ed Adams, senior vice president and general manager of the Santa Cruz Operation's U.S. business, says buyers are confused about what kind of server NT is. It's primarily a file and print server for the desktop environment, Adams said in September, even after Microsoft Corp. released a beefed-up Enterprise Edition of Windows NT Server that the company said would support mission-critical applications for organizations of all sizes. In Adams' view, NT is competing primarily with Novell Inc.'s NetWare to run local PC networks. "Unix is absolutely dominant as an application server," Adams says, and growing at double-digit rates.
No one disputes that Unix is selling well. But NT is doing even better. Microsoft officials brag that in the last year Windows NT Server outsold all the flavors of Unix servers combined. Agencies such as the Air Force are selecting NT as their standard local area network. At the same time, many of these users are sticking with Unix and mainframe platforms for their core business systems, as Adams suggests.
But Microsoft is making a serious run at the larger enterprise. Microsoft Vice President Paul Maritz predicted in a speech last summer that "by the year 2000 Windows NT will be a serious competitor in the glass-house space"-handling work once done only on the biggest computers.
That transition already has begun. NT is making noticeable headway in the Defense Department, for example, where it's one of six server operating systems that must be used in all combat-related systems. The other five are HP-UX, Solaris, AIX and two other Unix versions, from Digital Equipment Corp. and Silicon Graphics Inc. These computers need to handle heavy-duty, graphics-intensive applications for battle strategy and operations.
Moreover, when the Air Force set out to buy powerful Unix workstations this year, it ended up with computers that run NT as their primary operating system and Unix as an add-on. The computers, from Digital, use off-the-shelf software from Softway Systems Inc. of San Francisco that lets them run Unix applications. Under the contract, Hughes Data Systems will deliver up to 37,000 computers, plus software and related equipment. Analysts believe the setup will allow the Air Force to move existing Unix combat software gradually to NT.
The Air Force workstations will have Digital's powerful Alpha microprocessors at their heart, but for many agencies the switch from Unix to NT may be helped by the availability of less-expensive new servers based on the same Pentium Pro chips used in ordinary PCs. The key is to team them up in computers with two, four, eight or even 16 processors.
Beefed Up PCs
For less than $17,000, for example, Compaq Computer Corp. will sell you a four-processor server. It can have up to four gigabytes of memory and will accommodate 18 disk drives. Compaq says it will run the same business applications, such as Oracle, Informix and Sybase databases, faster than a more expensive computer from one of the well-known Unix computer-makers. The Compaq server will run Unix, but Compaq's new-product announcement takes special note of the server's suitability for Windows NT Server 4.0 and eventually 5.0, due out in 1998.
Because of the complexity of multi-user systems, especially when it comes to software and long-term maintenance, it is difficult to make direct cost comparisons between NT- and Unix-based systems. Prices change often, along with product configurations. There's a widespread belief that NT is a less expensive way to go, but one analysis, by market researchers at the Standish Group International Inc., found that Sun Solaris was somewhat less expensive than Windows NT Server for a typical intranet installation. On the other hand, the better-known Business Research Group reported in May that Windows NT Server environments cost 19 percent less to operate annually than combined Unix-PC LAN ones.
Price and performance comparisons are so thorny that a mini-industry has sprung up to evaluate hardware and software configurations. But these benchmark results seem less than illuminating when a new breakthrough announcement arrives almost daily. It's safe to say only that you need to add up all the hardware, software, infrastructure and operating costs-and client costs as well as server costs-for a proposed system.
How Secure Is It?
If there is no clear-cut winner when it comes to life-cycle costs, you should consider three other issues in choosing among server operating systems: security, scalability and reliability. Most experts agree that Unix security generally is better than NT's. If your data requires extra protection from prying eyes, you can invest in secure versions of Unix from all the major suppliers. Sun, for example, just released a new version of its Trusted Solaris. For ordinary government purposes, however, NT's security probably will suffice.
As for scalability, Unix is the winner at the moment on capacity to handle various workloads. It's becoming more price competitive at the low end, and it handles large volumes of transactions more gracefully at the high end. If you expect to have 1,000 or so users for an application that relies on databases, you should opt for Unix, the experts say. Upgrades are enabling NT to handle larger workloads, but some analysts say it won't be competitive in large installations for several years. On the other hand, small networks probably are better off with NT.
Reliability is NT's Achilles' heel, in the view of some. Analysts say Windows NT simply isn't mature enough to do all that it's being asked to do. Unix vendors crow about their products' ease of administration and reliability.
But Windows proponents may hold the trump card. The familiarity of Windows NT to the millions of Windows 3.1 and NT Workstation users worldwide makes it seem a friendlier operating system.
In the end, the comfortable may win out. The fragmented Unix industry is having trouble matching the marketing firepower of Microsoft and the ubiquity of Windows. Defections from the Unix camp are commonplace. One example: Silicon Graphics, the prestigious but financially challenged maker of graphics systems and servers, built its reputation on Unix and used to dismiss NT out of hand. Now it has bowed to market reality and begun developing NT-based products.
Windows NT's momentum buttresses another definition of openness in systems: the "industry standard." The industry standard in PCs is quite clear. It's Windows running on processors that come from Intel Corp. or emulate Intel's chips.
Although Microsoft and Intel own the key ingredients of this recipe, millions of people in the PC industry and its customers have psychological and financial stakes in it. They know how to get things done in Windows and don't want to deal with another platform. They enjoy the benefits of standardization, such as lower training costs, easier integration of disparate programs, and the availability of thousands of off-the-shelf software packages.
Comparable standardization benefits are part of NT's appeal to server buyers. "I think the main reason people move to NT is ease of use," says Edward M. Leary, senior Windows NT consultant for Digital Equipment's federal government unit. Windows users are likely to lean toward NT as they expand or upgrade their systems. Unix continues to be fragmented, with no single champion to stand up to the Microsoft juggernaut. Unix won't disappear any time soon, but a 400-pound gorilla has joined it in the open systems arena.
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