Could the unstoppable juggernaut Windows NT be losing its way?

We all have heard that the 800lb gorilla of operating systems is trampling its way into the heart of organisations, growing in scalability and crushing everything in its path, but things have started looking a bit wobbly for the keystone in Microsoft?s strategy for world domination.

First, Windows NT 4.0 runs into big problems at NatWest Bank, when customers are not able to get their money out of the bank?s cashpoints.

Then comes the news that the launch of the version 5.0 of Windows NT was to be delayed until ?it?s ready?. Designed to capture Novell?s business by packaging directory services and NetWare-type functionality with the operating system, NT 5.0 is still vapourware. It was not the operating system?s first delay, either.

Analysts are nevertheless still betting everything on the brash new kid on the enterprise block.

?Three out of four European corporates will standardise on NT as their mid-range operating platform during the next 18 months,? says Martin Butler, chairman of analyst the Butler Group.

He adds: ?Many IT managers are tired of technology ? they see NT as a vehicle for addressing the technology problem once and for all, leaving them free to deliver the solutions they are constantly under pressure to deliver.?

The increasing maturity of Windows NT applications is certainly proof of NT?s potential in large-scale computing.

The operating system provides a solid platform for networking and client/server computing. Its Windows-based administration tools are easy to learn, simplifying the process of preparing staff to be NT administrators.

Some analysts and businesses say it is not a question of whether Windows NT will scale to the requirements of the highest enterprise application server, but simply when.

Microsoft UK?s NT product manager, David Bridger says: ?Enterprise customers are already running on solely PC-based servers, including Microsoft with 26,000 employees. So it is possible to run your business on Windows NT throughout.?

NT is not out of the woods yet, however. Bradley Levin, head of technical services at networking consultancy Corporate Network Services, is familiar with setting up network operating systems. Levin says that NT needs a great deal more day-to-day administration than other operating systems.

He says: ?There?s a large amount of overheads which, in my view, are unnecessary, but people put up with it because they don?t know any better. And while staff feel that the functionality of their network is growing because they might have expanded from small work groups, if they?ve run enterprise-size networks, they find that NT is actually a limiter on what they can do.?

According to Levin, you have two options with NT ? put up with poorer performance than on an equivalent platform, or spend money on more powerful platforms and administrative staff.

?People who are happy going to NT have moved from groups of PCs to a small network, and you can hang a few machines together. For those who have come from proper networks, they lose functionality,? he says.

An example, says Levin, is the loss of a single point of administration. ?People who use NT Office Suite will run an NT Server, Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server. Each one has a different administration module and requires a different password for every user. Whereas a proper network, when run off a directory service, would have all of these consolidated to a single point,? he says.

Therein lies part of the rub. Although Novell NetWare is being outsold significantly by Windows NT, according to Butler Group, there have been disappointments along the way. Significantly, Microsoft has not acknowledged the need for a directory service until its own Active Directory becomes available with the forthcoming release of version 5.0 of NT.

?Every enterprise today realises that it needs a proper directory service and if it doesn?t, then it is deluding itself,? says Levin.

He says that during a recent Butler Group project with a ?professional institute?, the institute chose a Novell operating system ahead of Windows NT.

?In order to run a similar service on NT, it would have needed three times the physical amount of servers in order to offer roughly the equivalent service and resilience,? says Levin.

Despite this, NT versions 3.51 and 4.0 have made significant inroads into the network operating system market. This has largely been at the expense of Novell, although Novell still lays claim to 54% of the world market as recently as 1996 with NetWare/ IntranetWare environment. This represented 3.8 million servers and 79 million nodes.

Success for suppliers in the corporate NT market boils down to understanding how to implement mission-critical systems, as well as thoroughly understanding NT.

?The problem at the moment is that, although Windows NT is a good product, this isn?t enough to provide a good business solution,? says Data General?s technology marketing manager, Johann Edward. Companies ?need also to give services and support to ensure that the system works,? he says.

?This creates a problem because not many companies provide enterprise level support and implementation skills for NT,? he adds. ?Of course, NT will become better supported and it has the huge benefit of offering open standards ? allowing users to choose applications and platforms freely.?

Proving NT?s corporate class pedigree brings us back to version 5.0. When finally released, the environment will have to demonstrate its stability handling a number of complex areas, such as high availability, scalability, manageability, security and flexibility.

Very few products provide a complete solution to every problem, but NT 5.0 must prove that it recognises these issues ? or at the very least, facilitates their inclusion from a third-party source.

The Microsoft marketing machine has certainly worked on the vendor community.

Either through genuine belief in Windows NT or a fear of missing the boat, vendors have been falling over themselves to port their products to the Windows NT platform.

However, the credibility of NT 5.0 as an enterprise-class operating system will have to be underwritten by companies such as IBM, Computer Associates and SAP, who will deliver enterprise-class applications for deployment on NT 5.0.

According to a recent report from the Butler Group, Novell still has the biggest installed base with client nodes and server nodes running into many millions worldwide. The company has unrivalled expertise in selling and supporting network operating systems, according to the group. This, Butler says, combined with the release of NetWare 5.0, which incorporates transmission control protocol/Internet protocol, may hinder NT. But it is becoming apparent that Novell is happy to compete alongside NT, rather than replacing it.

One of the great strengths of NetWare is the network directory service (NDS) product, which is available in an NDS for NT version. This looks set to take advantage of Microsoft?s deficiency in this key area of network management, but for how long?

Time will tell whether Novell can exploit its new focus on product development and marketing brought by the arrival of industry heavyweights, headed by Sun Microsystem?s former technology chief Eric Schmidt.

Butler Group suggests that the lack of staff with Windows NT skills is certain to be an issue in large organisations. Whether this expertise is already available within IT departments will be a factor in just how ambitious the initial deployment should be.

This may well be an ideal first step if a relatively small project is an option, although scalability, manageability and high availability are unlikely to be tested in such a scenario.

Just when to embark on that first critical Windows NT deployment may well also be influenced by the availability of enough Microsoft-certified software engineers, rather than the availability of the operating system or a suitable application.

Even NT enthusiasts be-lieve that the gap between the availability of a skilled resource and enterprise requirements may well limit NT deployment, says the Butler Group.

Reluctance to adopt NT may put companies at the back of the queue for resources, or paying premium prices to get the staff you need.

The contribution that IT makes to any organisation at this level is such that an effective risk assessment strategy must be put in place.

Make sure your enterprise NT deployment is fully understood and costed, or, as Microsoft did with its initial NT 5.0 promises, you may bite off more that you can chew.

Self-tuning helps NT find right note

Installing and tuning Windows NT and related packages can be complex. Microsoft says that all its BackOffice technologies ? such as NT ? are self-tuning. ?Given that Microsoft believes this, it doesn?t provide opportunity for tuning within the product themselves,? says Phil Winter, Microsoft training manager of ICL?s training services organisation. ?The Microsoft philosophy is separate servers for specific tasks, rather than for one or two big machines running several tasks. As a result, the default is for a system to tune itself to use all available memory. ?This doesn?t conform to the large server approach. You therefore need to work out how to configure the system for mixed-use,? he says. As a general rule, good system design is more important than tuning the underlying software. ?Good database design will pay more dividends than slinging the system together and trying to tune it afterwards,? says Winter, who also recommends using multiple physical drives and split the log files from the database files. ?The Exchange performance wizard will do this automatically, but avoid the temptation to use multiple spindles to provide resilience through redundant array of inexpensive disks,? he says. ?Use one spindle for the system, one for the logs, and the rest for the databases.? Prior to version 5.5, Exchange cannot really exploit memory above 256Mb, but will allocate everything up to that figure to itself: ?Again, use the performance wizard to limit Exchange to a specific amount of memory if running it with something else,? he advises.