Yes, scalability is important for an enterprise server. Yes, raw
hardware efficiency is important for an enterprise server. However,
they are not crucial. All systems everywhere have been inefficient
when compared with their successors. What _is_ crucial is reliability.
NT is unique among candidates for enterprise service in that it
entirely lacks this feature. It is meaningless to compare the
efficiency of a running system against one which might have done some
operations faster if it had not crashed. It is even less meaningful
to speculate erroneously which operations those would have been.
I promised to return to the issue of how to define enterprise
service. My own definition of an Enterprise Server is:
A computer system which performs an essential service for a large
organization. A key feature distinguishing an enterprise server
is that the effects of even a short-term failure exceed the entire
cost of deploying the system. For example, it takes only a few
minutes' down time at a nationwide stock exchange to justify the
expense of entirely replacing the system with something more
reliable.
More succinctly: "An enterprise server does not crash."
Until NT attains a difficult-to-measure level of reliability,
its advocates would be wise to avoid mentioning it on the same
page with the word "enterprise".
Nathan Myers
ncm@nospam.cantrip.org
p.s. This is starting to drift off-topic for the list. Sorry.
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