Choosing The Right OS

The battle to be the dominant operating

system-the marketing and technology wars that we fondly call the OS wars-has always looked

more than a bit like the Star Wars trilogy. Be it IBM in the mainframe era, or Digital at

mid ranges, or Microsoft now, there has always been an 'evil empire' accused of plotting

to take over the world. If there is an evil empire, then can the 'rebel outposts' be far

behind? They have also always existed in the form of a MacOS, a free BSD, or a Linux. And

both the imperialists and the rebels have always seemed to be a bit too fanatical about

their adherence and tactics!

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empire of the day rakes in the moolah, the rebels await the return of the Jedi, the day

when the empire will be overthrown, and victory will finally be theirs. This script has

more or less held true so long. But is slowly undergoing change. No, I am not in any way

suggesting that Microsoft is unstoppable or that a newer or better operating system is

possible. All I am suggesting is that we are headed toward an era of peaceful coexistence

of operating systems, an era when the operating system you are running really does not

matter that much.

Your network need no longer be the monopoly

of any one operating system. Nor do you need to spend an enormous packet if you need to

run more than one operating system in trying to make them communicate with each other.

Open standards (like TCP/IP) have ensured that today's operating systems can seamlessly

integrate with one another and be transparent to the user. For example, a user on your

network could call data from a database running on Unix, to an analytical tool running on

NT and print the results out on a printer set up on a NetWare server without being any

wiser about all this.

The biggest advantage of this is that you

are no longer limited about your choice of applications by the operating system you are

running. You can safely decide on the application that you need to run and then add the

operating system that it runs on to your network and have it coexist with other

applications and their operating systems.

For example, in my experience, NetWare has

been a more stable file, and print server and Linux a cheaper and more effective mail

server than NT ever was. And all of them can handle DOS, Windows Macintosh, OS/2 or Unix

clients with equal ease. So, there is no reason why I should not use NetWare for file and

print, Linux for mail, one of the commercial Unixes for my GIS and CAD applications, and

NT for my databases, all on the same network. There is no reason to convert the entire

network from say NetWare to Linux if I want to have email at every desktop, or change over

completely to NT just because I want to run SQL server. So, most big networks will run

multiple operating systems, each doing what it is best at.

Adding the new OS to the network is not

only easy, it also saves you from the unnecessary overheads, headaches, and most

importantly the down time and user retraining associated with a complete switch over. And

increasingly, that is the path being chosen by IT professionals.