|
Server OS market: A tale of two contenders
With runner-up NetWare migrating into the Linux
camp, it’s now a slugfest between Windows and Linux on the Server
OS front. Though Unix remains the king of the hill when it comes
to mission-critical deployments, Windows is getting there, says
Prashant L Rao
While Unix continues to be the first choice
for running mission-critical loads, Windows 2003 is taking Microsoft
where Unix has gone before. Linux’s market share in India is still
in single digits but when you consider that runner-up Novell is
going to offer a Linux kernel with its upcoming NetWare 7 (in addition
to the traditional NetWare kernel), things look bright for Tux.
Windows Server 2003: Going
where Unix has gone before
What’s new
 |
| Yasir Yousuff says that Windows Server
has gone beyond the evaluation stage with organisations looking
to Windows Server for serious deployments |
WSRM (Windows System Resource
Manager) has been announced. It manages and allocates machine resources—CPU,
memory, and bandwidth—across application workloads. This is interesting,
as this kind of automated, granular control was previously unavailable
on Windows Server operating systems. Another significant announcement
is that of the Sharepoint Team Services (STS) module, which lets
folks within an organisation collaborate with each other and build
departmental websites. Banks and PSUs are deploying STS; it is a
free add-on module for Windows Server 2003. Then there’s Microsoft
Identity Integration Server that provides a consolidated view of
enterprise information and single sign-on to all domains.
Blackcomb will be the next
release of Windows Server sometime in 2006. Analysts say that the
server version of Longhorn (the successor to Windows XP) could be
a modest upgrade to Windows 2003. Many believe that Blackcomb will
pack just enough changes to keep up with the new features of the
Longhorn client, such as the new file system.
Strengths
When a HP Integrity Superdome
hit a rating of 707,102 tpmC (transactions per minute) at a price-performance
of $7.16/tpmC on May 20 this year, it marked Microsoft’s move into
the big league of corporate computing. That effort still stands
at number three on the tpc.org Top Ten non-clustered performance
results list. The test bed ran Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise
Edition 64-bit running on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter
Edition.
On the application front, no
less than 60 Indian ISVs have ported their applications to Windows
2003. Internationally, 250 ISVs are backing Windows Server.
Until now, Windows lacked credibility
running enterprise applications (barring messaging, where it dominates
the Indian market). That’s starting to change. An Indian co-operative
bank is getting ready to go live with its core banking application
on Windows 2003 this quarter. The first ERP deployments on Windows
2003 are also expected this quarter.
Weaknesses
Security and patch management
are problem areas. These are being addressed through SUS (Software
Update Service that’s integrated in Windows 2003) and Baseline Security
Analyser (downloadable)—two parts of Windows Server security. Scheduled
updates—weekly or bi-weekly through SUS. Group policy management
lets you update all servers and desktops in the organisation.
Opportunities
"We’ve gone beyond the
evaluation stage. Organisations are looking to Windows Server for
serious deployments," says Yasir Yousuff, senior marketing
manager, Windows Server Platforms at Microsoft India.
The value proposition of the
64-bit Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition lies in the fact that it’s
priced the same as the 32-bit version. With HP’s 64-bit Superdome
available from this month, "64-CPU, 64-bit computing isn’t
restricted to the Sun RISC architecture anymore. Microsoft and Intel
offer a platform for ERP and HPC," adds Yousuff.
Threats
The biggest threat to Windows
2003 is that companies that have just finished deploying Windows
2000 aren’t going to be very happy about migrating to yet another
server OS right away. Gartner estimates that by the end of 2004,
as much as one-third of NT 4 users will move to Windows Server 2003,
leaving two-thirds on NT4. Gartner also expects the majority of
customers moving to Windows Server 2003 will be from Windows NT
4—80 percent of them. Once again, Microsoft’s biggest rival is Microsoft
itself.
- Windows Server 2003 - Standard
Edition with 5 clients - Rs 43,000
- Windows Server 2003 - Enterprise
Edition with 25 clients - Rs 1,73,000
The prices mentioned above are
the estimated retail prices; the street price of the product
may vary from reseller to reseller.
Source: Microsoft India.
|
Switching to Exchange
“We have seen a trend of companies migrating
from other platforms to Exchange,” says Pankaj Ukey, marketing
manager at Microsoft India. Many large companies have started migrating
from Sendmail on Linux, Lotus Notes and Netscape Mail Messenger.
Microsoft believes that the combination of Outlook, Exchange and
Windows Server is winning it these deals.
| Company |
Original Platform |
New platform |
Benefits |
Future plans |
| Moser Baer |
Linux Sendmail |
Exchange 2000 on Windows
2000 |
In built anti-virus.
A manager can access subordinate's calendars from his machine.
Online SMS
Common address book across the
organisation. |
Moser Baser will provide
Remote Access to its suppliers and customers. They will be able
to collaborate with the company more efficiently by using the
voice conferencing facility. EDI will also be incorporated into
the system to minimise data entry and standardise interaction
through this system. |
| Godrej Industries, Godrej
Consumer Products and Godrej Agrovet |
Linux Sendmail
|
Exchange 2000 on Windows
2000
Microsoft Exchange 2000 |
Consolidated 12 mail servers
previously running on Linux onto a single server.
Pays one-sixth the amount for support, than it did while using
Sendmail on Linux.
Outlook Web Access provides Web browser access to e-mail, scheduling
contacts, and collaborative information stored in Exchange folders.
This has helped the field sales force of Godrej Consumer Products
Limited be part of the enterprise network, wherever they are. |
Godrej plans to build on the collaboration features of Exchange
2000 and create an employee portal based on Exchange and SharePoint. |
| Hexaware Technologies |
Lotus Notes, Solaris and messaging services and Linux running
Sendmail
|
Server on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
|
Reduced number of messaging
servers by half.
Employees in each location (four servers running Windows 2000
and Exchange 2000 were deployed, one each in key office) were
trained to manage the unified Windows 2000 Server and Exchange
2000 environment. IT support within Hexaware thus was broadened
without the company having to hire new specialists. |
|
Enterprise Linux: Stronger
each passing day
 |
| According to Javed Tapia, enterprises
are looking at 64-bit Red Hat Linux on the Itanium 2 as an option
for server consolidation |
Both Red Hat and SuSE offer Enterprise Linux
versions of their distributions. IBM is pushing Linux in the enterprise.
Red Hat states that IBM is its strongest ally in India. Oracle is
another big proponent of Linux and the operating system is picking
up in the branch banking segment. Other than that, IDC conducted
research in early 2003 that concluded that Linux beat Unix while
running Internet/intranet/extranet and collaborative workloads.
On the Internet/intranet/extranet front, Linux beat Unix on TCO
(Linux had a TCO only 55 percent that of Unix). Running a collaborative
workload Linux did even better, having a TCO only 18 percent of
Unix.
Strengths
"64-bit Linux has a strong
value proposition. Enterprises are looking at 64-bit Red Hat Linux
on the Itanium 2 as an option for server consolidation," says
Javed Tapia, director-India, Red Hat. ISVs are lining up behind
the Linux juggernaut; Red Hat Enterprise Linux is supported by the
likes of Oracle, PeopleSoft, CA, BEA, Veritas and EMC.
Linux is picking up in the
total branch automation (TBA) sub-segment of the banking, financial
services and insurance (BFSI) segment. Zenith Infotech has helped
South Malabar Gramin Bank deploy TBA across its branches on Red
Hat Enterprise Linux. The bank happens to be the largest regional
rural bank (RRB) in India. More than 200 branches will come under
this total branch automation initiative.
Central Bank of India also
runs TBA on Red Hat. Linux is very popular among service providers.
Rediff uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS. Reliance Infocomm also
uses a lot of Linux.
Weaknesses
While vendors such as Red Hat
and SuSE have worked hard to provide a support net for enterprise
Linux users, far too many organisations have sufficient skills in
using Linux to roll their own deployments and manage them to boot.
"Service providers and data centres are big users of Linux
but as they have the expertise, they come to us only when they have
a problem," says Tapia.
Opportunities
Red Hat is trying to build
an ecosystem where it supports more databases and Application Servers.
"There’s a huge demand for Linux-based professional services,"
says Tapia, adding, "There’s so much momentum on training—we’re
scheduling multiple batches where we used to schedule two. Training
people on Linux works out cheaper in terms of hardware and software
than training on a commercial Unix platform." There are 500
Red Hat certified professionals in India, a number that’s growing
rapidly. A few Windows to Linux migrations are starting to happen,
this is more likely to happen in education or government.
Threats
The SCO lawsuit could put Linux
on the defensive, although IBM, Red Hat and the entire open source
community are taking SCO head-on in the fight.
Shipments in 2002: 69,344 Source: IDC India
|
SCO claims that Linux 2.4 could not have achieved its SMP
scaling capabilities without the illegal copying and misappropriation
of its IP. In compensation, SCO expects Linux customers to
negotiate a license agreement for the Unix binaries of UnixWare
7.1.3. SCO didn’t specify a price, but Gartner estimates
that a single unit license of UnixWare could cost from $500
to $700 per server, with discounts for volume deployments.
The copyright registration follows SCO’s May 2003 letter
warning 1,500 firms using Linux that they could face legal
action.
Gartner believes that it would only take a few large enterprises
toeing SCO’s line for others to start negotiating license
agreements and creating hybrid open-source and proprietary
software contracts. Some of the consequences that Gartner
foresees include:
- Linux will have difficulties evolving beyond appliance
and infrastructure roles, revitalising Unix and boosting
Microsoft.
- Red Hat and SuSE will have more difficulty generating
enterprise server subscription fees since the total cost
of ownership would rise by the cost of the SCO license fees.
- IBM will have to defend Linux and AIX, bring the litigation
to a speedy head, and keep customers from re-evaluating
purchase decisions.
- Oracle’s 9iRAC for Linux will suffer a setback during
its ramp-up phase.
- Independent software vendors could temporarily delay
commitments and investments in Linux until the legal issues
are resolved.
- Sun Microsystems can revitalise its marketing for Solaris
while Dell’s quest to become more important in the
market’s high-end will slow.
|
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS - Standard edition - Rs.
74,500 + taxes
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS - Premium edition - Rs. 1,24,500
+ taxes
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES - Standard edition - Rs.
39,500 + taxes
Source: Red Hat India.
|
|
Linux is a threat to Unix in messaging and collaboration
With a recent IDC study finding that Linux has substantially
lower TCO than Unix while running collaborative workloads—organisations
will see the merits of using Linux as a platform for messaging
and collaboration where Linux has a TCO that’s less than
a fifth of Unix’s TCO. The most popular Unix based messaging
solution, Sendmail, runs on Linux as well. As Linux gets more
scalable (particularly in terms of scale-out) it is becoming
a formidable competitor to Unix in this area.
Despite massive improvements in scalability, Windows
is yet to take on Unix in a big way at the high-end
64-bit Windows Server 2003 is available on 64-CPU HP Superdomes.
Despite the fact that Windows finally does SMP as well as
it did clustering, large enterprise deployments are still
mostly on Unix. While Microsoft accounts for four out of the
Top Five clustered results at tpc.org, it still has only three
of the Top Ten non-clustered results to its credit. Still
the gap has narrowed with the Windows Server-HP Integrity
Superdome combo ranked third with 707,102 tpmC and a better
price/tpmC than the leaders.
Unix is moving up into mainframe territory
With Windows and Linux dominant in the low-end of the market
and moving into the mid-range, Unix is becoming the new ‘mainframe’
OS. Machines like the Sun Fire 15K are perfect examples of
Unix’s march upwards. The downside is that sales of high-end
machines are falling. A Merrill Lynch report says, “Sales
of servers priced above $1 million are down 28 percent year-over-year
in 4Q to $2.4 billion. ‘Good enough’ computing and
Moore’s Law are taking their toll.”
NetWare remains strong in branch banking though Linux
is starting to make inroads in this segment
TBA accounts for huge numbers of Intel servers sold in the
country. With the ongoing computerisation of Indian banking
this has been the backbone of the SIAS (Standard Intel Architecture
Servers) server market in recent years. With four out of five
branch automation applications shipping on NetWare, the original
network OS is still alive and kicking. That said, Linux is
starting to make inroads into this lucrative segment.
Apache is still tops in Web servers
Windows 2003 has ramped up very quickly but Apache on Solaris
and Linux still leads in the Web server arena with a 63.98
percent share in the latest Netcraft survey. Microsoft was
second with 23.75 percent. This is one market where Microsoft
hasn’t been able to make a substantial dent, Apache has
held a greater than 60 percent share all along. Redmond’s
latest shot at giving Apache a run for its money is the Web
Edition of Windows Server 2003 that’s priced at $400.
Application Servers and development platforms are acting
as an ‘insulating layer’ shielding companies from
the server OS
With the growing importance of application server software
and the developer community getting polarised into two camps—.NET
and J2EE—the role of the server OS is diminishing to
a certain extent. If your application runs on J2EE, it doesn’t
matter which OS you run as long as you have an application
server that supports J2EE.
|
Novell NetWare 6.5: Innovating
to stay in the running
What’s new
The biggest thing that’s new with
NetWare 6.5 is that Novell has taken its first steps toward embracing
Linux. The company has started off by offering Nterprise Linux Services—a
combo of file, print, messaging, directory and management services
on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server.
Building on this, Novell intends to offer a Linux kernel with NetWare
7 in addition to the traditional NetWare kernel. “We are committed
to Enterprise Linux. Novell will deliver all its network services
on Linux and NetWare,” says Munesh Jalota, country manager
of Onward Novell India.
Novell has acquired Ximian, raising its
credibility with the Linux community. Gartner believes that Ximian’s
Red Carpet management products dovetail with Novell’s Zenworks
offering, and Ximian’s Evolution product provides a more sophisticated
Linux interface for GroupWise. Ashit J Panjwani, national manager,
Alliance & Marketing, Onward Novell India says, “We expect
Ximian’s product line to complement our efforts in managing
Linux desktops through Zenworks.”
Other than that, NetWare 6.5 expands the
server operating system’s support for open source applications
and technology, including Apache, MySQL, Tomcat, Perl and PHP. Novell
also has the exteNd Application Server and the exteNd Workbench
development environment for running and creating J2EE applications.
Strengths
NetWare has a reputation for being a robust
and failsafe server operating system. It invented the network OS
category and even today it offers scalability up to a 32-node cluster
of 32-way boxes. NDS has been the gold standard of directory services
for quite some time and with NDS 8.7, Novell has added UDDI support
to it.
Hundreds of applications run on the NetWare
platform. The Taj Group runs its hotel management software, Fidelio,
on NetWare in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. TBA (Total Branch
Automation) is perhaps NetWare’s stronghold with 80 to 85 percent
of branch banking applications being developed on NetWare. Suffice
it to say that India’s largest bank, the State Bank of India,
is on NetWare.
Weaknesses
NetWare flirted with Java and was slow
to move to IP thanks to its reliance on its traditional IPX protocol.
Of late, it hasn’t been seen as an innovator and thought leader,
though oddly enough it has been innovating like crazy.
Opportunities
Novell has learnt from its mistakes and
the company’s latest move to make the Linux kernel an integral
part of NetWare could pay dividends when NetWare 7 is released.
Threats
Linux was the biggest threat to NetWare.
With its latest announcements, Novell seems to have co-opted the
Penguin. Still, Novell runs the risk of becoming yet another Linux
distro.
|
June 2003 saw Novell moving many of its services over to
the Linux kernel through a product offering called Novell
Nterprise Linux Services. IDC believes that Novell’s
stated strategy with the forthcoming NetWare 7.x product is
to move to a product architecture that includes a kernel surrounded
by a collection of removable services that ride above the
kernel. The goal of this strategy is to insulate Novell’s
messaging, directory, systems management, and print and file
services business (including the iPrint and iFolder technologies)
from the declining NetWare business. NetWare 7.x will introduce
some of the very same ‘componentised’ services on
top of the NetWare kernel. Novell also indicated that it intends
to focus its marketing more on these high-level system ‘services’
and the benefits they offer organisations, rather than the
underlying kernel. Novell highlighted deals with Dell Computer,
Hewlett-Packard, and IBM to resell these products. It also
announced that it is expanding CNE training services to include
a new category, the Novell Certified Linux Engineer programme,
which will become active in early 2004.
It is IDC’s belief that Novell’s very future is
dependent on products that don’t require an underlying
NetWare infrastructure and that only by going beyond the existing
NetWare customer base can Novell hope to stop the product
revenue decline it has seen for the past several years. Novell
has also tiptoed into another possible market opportunity
in offering full support for Red Hat and SuSE Linux distributions.
This is both a defensive and an offensive move, keeping its
support business busy by adding more support offerings, and
represents a move by Novell toward becoming a more full-service
Linux vendor, albeit without its own branded distribution.
When the Novell product reaches a version 2.0 level (projected
for CY 2Q04), full file system support will be integrated
into the Linux version, which will eliminate any need for
Samba. Novell believes that this product will either continue
to be used as a complementary product to Samba or as an alternative
technology for some enterprises. Other benefits to come in
the second release of the product include the clustered file
system, SAN and NAS support, and similar advanced features.
Supporting file services and print services consistently rates
in the top five workloads for Linux environments in IDC’s
studies.
(Source: IDC)
|
- Novell NetWare 6.5 five users - Rs 44,000
Source: Onward Novell India.
|
|
