Cost of ownership: One careful owner

The delay of Windows NT5 is bad news for users already struggling with the cost of corporate computing. Tony Smith reports

Apple once attempted to persuade corporate IT departments to switch from PCs to Macintoshes, by quoting a survey which claimed that while a Windows box may be cheaper to buy than a Mac, it was far more expensive in the long run.

Compare the two platforms? total cost of ownership (TCO), it said ? a combination of the purchase, peripherals and software prices and, most importantly, what it costs to support. The Mac was the clear winner, said Apple.

Whatever the accuracy of this claim, it tapped into an emerging realisation among corporate users that the cost of running a network of desktop PCs ? of whatever brand or platform ? was rather higher than they had expected. Subsequent figures from market analyst Gartner Group, which showed the ownership cost of a networked Windows 95 machine to be just under $10,000 (#6,250) per year ? nearly four and a quarter times the purchase price ? have since revealed the true scale of the problem.

The high-profile campaign by the likes of Sun Microsystems and Oracle to promote the network computer (NC) has also been instructive. Relatively few users are overly concerned about the prospect the NC holds for breaking Microsoft?s grip on the market, but its promise of reducing a network?s cost of ownership has stirred their interest.

Modern PCs, even those aimed at enterprise customers are still designed with standalone use in mind. The ubiquitous Windows is a case in point. With this operating system, users can change system settings and add new hardware and software. Assuming they do so successfully, the variety of configurations on a network merely makes support teams? jobs harder. But if a user installs a device or utility incorrectly, maybe wiping an essential system file in the process, it?s another story. If they do something disastrous, such as infect a machine with a virus, the effect on a network can be catastrophic.

Installing hardware with no CD-Rom drives and floppy units removed or disabled is one solution, but even here canny users can circumvent the best laid plans of network administrators by downloading files from the Internet or even, as one major record label?s IT department discovered, by getting chums to email compressed applications.

The NC?s answer lies in its focus on the server, says Eddie Bleasdale, head of NetProject, an organisation dedicated to researching ecommerce solutions on behalf of major UK IT users such as NatWest, Legal & General, Hampshire County Council and National Grid.

Even clients equipped with a local hard drive can qualify as network computing devices, he says. ?The NC specification doesn?t rule this out, that?s a myth. Managing clients centrally is fundamental to the network computing.?

Client states are mirrored on the server to allow users to move from machine to machine, downloading their files and user profile wherever they go. Machines are monitored remotely, and NCs that have been shut down can be activated by the administrator.

Gartner Group?s research into the ownership costs of different platforms suggests that this centralisation of management is the key to reducing cost of ownership. Its model, one of the most respected systematic attempts to chart cost of ownership, indicates that an NC costs about 23% less to operate for a year than a PC running Windows 95, although that doesn?t take into account the cost of migrating to Java. Windows NT saves just 1% compared to Windows 95.

Figures like these are hard to ignore, and Microsoft and the rest of the ?Wintel? camp have come under increasing pressure to develop solutions to the TCO problem. The first of these was the NetPC ? a Wintel-based imitation of the NC specification. But the NetPC has proved a flop, with even one-time supporters ? most prominently Compaq ? now walking away from it.

As Gartner research director Howard Seabrook puts is, no one will buy into a new concept when all that?s really different is the chassis.

In the wake of NetPC?s failure came Microsoft?s Zero Administration for Windows (Zaw) scheme. Seabrook?s colleague, Milind Govekar says that Zaw, like NetPC before it, is essentially a new marketing spin on existing technology ? specifically Microsoft BackOffice?s Systems Management Server (SMS) and some of Windows NT Server?s more hidden features. These have been repackaged as ?zero administration? kits and bundled with system profile and management policy templates to make them easier to use.

However, Microsoft claims that with Zaw, the focus is not on a technological quick fix for ownership costs. but on providing the centralised management features of the NC model. ?Zaw spans across all our products,? says Microsoft UK Windows product marketing manager Frances Reay. ?It provides a framework for users to develop their own TCO reduction strategies.?

?Framework?, in this case, is shorthand for ?proof of concept?, says Govekar. While some Zaw components are in place and ready for use, making full use of the centralised management approach is some way off. It is dependent on the arrival of NT 5.0, adds Govekar, and then on at least one or two service packs.

NT 5.0?s delays have had a major effect on Zaw?s availability ? Windows 98, for example, was to have had a number of Zaw components built in, including its client caching system IntelliMirror, but these were dropped when Microsoft realised it would be unable to synchronise the delivery of both in Windows 98 and NT 5.0, beta 2. Indeed, Windows 98 was to have shipped with an updated zero administration kit but, according to Reay, this will ship separately from the operating system ?in a few weeks?.

As it stands, Zaw, through the zero administration kits and SMS, allows administrators to monitor hardware and software inventories and diagnose systems remotely. It is also possible to set up user profiles and usage policies describing their desktop configurations and the actions they can perform. Individual machines can be locked down to prevent hardware and software being installed by the user. The Windows 98 zero administration kit will allow the OS? system file checker to fix from the server corrupted or inadvertently erased system components.

NT 5.0 will extend this with a more robust set of management features. IntelliMirror, says Reay, records client applications, preferences and data on the server, allowing users to work on any machine and malfunctioning machines to be swapped out without a complex software installation. The server automatically rebuilds the user?s hard disk contents, and user profiles are extended to control the user interface ? setting just what appears in the Start menu, for instance, and disabling OS functions. Applications can be assigned to users or published on the network.

Assuming that NT 5.0 ships around the second quarter of 1999 ? the latest official ship date ? then Zaw has the potential to generate large savings. Gartner Group?s model predicts NT 5.0?s version of Zaw will reduce ownership costs by 21% over the base unmanaged Windows 95 box ? just 2% behind an NC. The saving increases to 18% using the current Zaw feature set.

However, warns Govekar, the situation isn?t as clear-cut as the numbers suggest. NT 5.0, he believes, is unlikely to be a solid platform before the next century ? even Reay admits that Zaw is a ?long-term strategy?. By then, who can say how users? business needs ? and therefore their IT needs ? will have changed? Even assuming they haven?t, the Zaw remains a Windows-only technology, and many organisations continue to implement other platforms alongside Microsoft?s operating system.

For that reason, Govekar believes it is important not to fall into the trap of assuming technology alone can solve the TCO problem. Zaw may provide the tools to simplify management tasks, but it?s more important to implement the methodology first and fit the technology around it. ?The key thing is to address complexity. Most TCO problems come from a less-than-simple infrastructure,? says Govekar. ?Fix that and you can make savings before you even think about technology.?

NCs may seem to offer a lower TCO, but it will be some time before they will make power users as productive as a fully-featured PC. In that light, the whole NC vs PC debate is pointless. The two can co-exist within an organisation ? what matters is that the right user gets the right equipment.

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