A recent positive development has been the new bond between X/Open, which sets standards, and OSF, which concentrates upon implementations and basic research. OSF helps its sponsors pool their resources to produce provably compatible open technologies at a fraction of the cost of each one developing them in parallel. With infrastructure products such as DCE, it's important to have coverage across as wide a spectrum of platforms as possible. Even Windows has DCE client support, which was engineered from the open specification.
The move to open systems has proved beneficial to many users. Organizations that have large networks of heterogeneous systems, including major financial institutions, academic/
research communities, and federal/state governments, have received the greatest benefit. Companies can develop new applications knowing that they can be deployed on a wide variety of systems and that no expensive conversion will be necessary when they are moved from one system to another.
One multinational bank, described by representatives as typical of its class of users, keeps the bulk of its customer information in gigantic mainframe databases at several central sites. Over time, its traditional transaction-processing (TP) applications have been "distributed" so that the mainframes perform only database management (at thousands of transactions per second).
A network of UNIX systems executes the actual banking transactions and supports the user interface while providing message routing and security functions. Small branch offices might use only one or two personal workstations for everything. Larger branches and regional hubs use dedicated systems for the applications and support a variety of personal computers and dumb terminals at the teller windows and bank officers' desks.
Bank representatives said they feel that the bank gets the greatest value from its DCE-based client/server applications. In some cases, the bank will offer a product in a limited area, supported by DCE application code installed in the local office or regional center. If the product is successful, it can easily be installed across the network. With close attention to detail, conversion costs are almost nil.
Furthermore, multinational corporations are often faced with business realities that force them to use specific platforms in various countries. Again, the universality of UNIX and the other open systems technologies make the choice of hardware only a secondary concern.
Choosing the Right System
I don't know how many times a friend has asked my advice on how to buy a system. My first question is always, "What will you use it for?" My second question is, "What will you really use it for?" With a little luck, the answers will resemble one another. Desktop personal computers are rendered obsolete within two years these days. For anything else, my third question is, "In three years, what will you be using it for?"
Many people select home computers for all the wrong reasons. They tend to focus on the latest fad and overlook important features--or the lack thereof. I am convinced that exactly the same problem occurs when selecting systems for the workplace. Here are my suggestions for a few common cases.
I won't argue the case of the stand-alone application system: It runs what it runs. Likewise, many users' needs are met in full by personal productivity tools, such as word processors and spreadsheets. If you leave out a specific application that dictates the system selection, these users would be better served (and more productive in the long run) by trying out competing systems (preferably not limited to any one architecture) and choosing whichever system best fits their work style.
Technical users, including programmers, need a system that is compatible with their major applications (or target platforms), which may well be an enterprise server operating system. Again, the application drives the decision. In my own case, the critical application is the set of tools that my team uses for software development: That justified the UNIX workstation in my office. My workstation also runs our word processor of choice and "groupware," both of which are UNIX versions of popular applications.
Following the concept of fitting the tool to its use, it makes sense to examine "client" systems next. Local systems that are used primarily as clients to remote servers should be optimized for that use. The network introduces a number of new issues, not the least of which is the security--in all senses of the word--of the connections between clients and servers. There are no savings to be had by skimping on the client/server interface.
DCE provides a rich and robust API, is actively (and compatibly) being enhanced, and is available on a wide variety of platforms. The guarantee of DCE is that you don't have to use the same platform for both client and server. You can choose to deploy clients on several different platforms and still use common servers. Because DCE client software exists for both UNIX and Windows systems, I'll call this point a "wash" at the client level, if there are no secondary considerations.
For what I will call local--or departmental--servers, it makes sense to minimize the differences between client and server architectures. In the case of file servers, the server should be chosen to provide service to all the clients on its local network. In this situation, I would expect an NT server to be preferred for use with NT clients: Support becomes that much easier.
A heterogeneous set of clients might dictate a different outcome, however. File servers are usually busy enough that they are dedicated to that task and aren't expected to also run user applications.
Classic enterprise-server applications, which use (at least) multiuser servers, are across the bridge from single-user PCs. Many of these applications fall into the "bet your business" category, including the day-to-day applications that keep products flowing out and money or raw materials flowing in. No company, large or small, can afford outages on these systems.
Nor can companies afford the damage that can occur when "spoofs" are perpetrated by unauthorized visitors. DCE provides mutual authentication within the security domain--and between domains--which is not matched by any widely distributed proprietary system.
For this class of system, applications written to open APIs are the only guarantee of portability later. These applications have life spans that often exceed five years, and they require stable APIs that will be safe from incompatible changes when the underlying software is upgraded.
Use of the open systems APIs also ensures that server applications can be replicated on additional platforms whenever and wherever they're needed. This is where open systems perform exactly as intended. There are improvements yet to be made, but all the essentials exist now, including high-performance TP for those applications that require it.
It is as enterprise servers that the open systems technologies in general--and UNIX in particular--earn their keep. Although the promise of open systems was once derided as a pipe dream, it is now reality and will remain so into the next millennium.
Having moved beyond the factional disputes of a few years ago, vendors and users of open systems now speak with a common voice. The various open systems technology offerings continue to mature and respond to the evolving needs of their users.
Surrounded but Not Replaced
Minicomputer vendors established their presence a decade ago by using their systems to "surround" traditional mainframes. This strategy was successful largely because it allowed the two environments to complement one another. The strengths of each worked synergistically.
Desktop systems now surround enterprise/local-server systems. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and it provides new opportunities for synergy. Open systems and UNIX both solve an important set of problems for their users. Although they have some solutions and users in common, each has its own strengths outside common ground. As the movement continues from isolated user systems to networks of systems, the need for and advantages of truly open systems technologies will become more evident.
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