Servers In '99: Power, Stability, Ease

Vendors will face pressure from many directions this year to make server hardware and software more powerful and stable, and at the same time easier to use and administer.

While systems vendors bolster PC servers, Linux will continue to gain credibility as an alternative to proprietary operating systems, and Unix vendors will add new functionality and interoperability to their operating systems.

Year 2000 remediation will cast a long shadow over IT departments in 1999, draining resources usually available for installation and administration of new hardware and software.

Companies that have finished their Y2K conversions will try to lock down their infrastructure while they prepare to ride out the typhoon to be unleashed on Jan. 1, 2000 and companies that aren't ready will scramble to meet the looming deadline. Either way, that doesn't leave a lot of money and staffing to devote to new hardware purchases, said Dataquest analyst Dan Dolan.

In fact, Dataquest estimates that server hardware sales from 1998 to 1999 will be relatively flat, increasing from $47.3 billion in 1998 to $48 billion this year.

"The big issue on everybody's mind is, when does everybody sort of shut down and stop buying as they get ready for Y2K, and when does the faucet turn back on in the year 2000?" Dolan said.

Likewise, Y2K issues will slow acceptance of Windows 2000, the next version of Windows NT, said Jonathan Eunice, an analyst and IT advisor at consultancy Illuminata Inc.

"We see '99 as a year of technology consolidation, not deployment of new things," Eunice said.

But whether users are ready or not, Windows 2000 will likely be here this year. Still lacking an official ship date, Microsoft is expected to release its next-generation business server platform in mid-to-late 1999. The third and final beta is due next month.

The OS--which is reportedly more stable, requiring far fewer reboots than NT 4.0--takes much of its user interface from Windows 98, including setup, automatic hardware sensing and support for mobile users.

But perhaps the most anticipated feature of Windows 2000 is its Active Directory distributed directory technology. Active Directory is central to Windows 2000's management capabilities in that it maintains a repository of information about users, devices and applications on the network.

Still, Active Directory faces stiff competition from Novell's counterpart directory technology, Novell Directory Services, which has recently gained support from multiple network equipment vendors, including Lucent Technologies and Cisco.

Windows 2000 also integrates server technology for supporting thin clients. Windows Terminal Server is now a separate product in Windows NT 4.0.

As for PC server hardware, look for eight-way systems running the Pentium II Xeon chip from Compaq, Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi PC Corp. and IBM. Compaq and Dell plan first-quarter shipments for their servers, while IBM and HP plan to ship their products by June.

Chip Childress, director of information systems at Holston Medical Group, said his company plans to evaluate eight-way PC servers in 1999.

The company is hoping the eight-way servers can deliver the high power on the back end needed to guarantee throughput for its application that enables doctors to access medical records. The company also looks to the faster servers as a platform for server consolidation to reduce management headaches and to reduce the licensing fees for server software.

"Consolidation of the servers is important to us from a cost standpoint," Childress said.

He said his company may buy the eight-way servers in four-end configurations at first, holding the additional processor capacity in reserve for future expansion.

Also this year, Unisys Corp. will ship a 32-processor PC system, and Data General Corp. and Sequent Computer Systems Inc. both plan 64-processor systems.

One of the biggest factors this year is a technology that won't even exist: IA-64. Last year, Intel delayed plans to ship its first 64-bit processor, Merced, until mid-2000. Expect PC vendors to scramble to demonstrate how their products shipping this year will be easily upgradable to IA-64, and RISC vendors will be scrambling to show that IA-64 won't make their technologies obsolete.

Unix vendors will add clustering, partitioning and distributed file systems to their operating systems, essentially turning commodity Unix servers into flexible mainframes, according to Illuminata analysts.

SCO and IBM will release a merged UnixWare and AIX for 32-bit Intel systems and upcoming 64-bit platforms.

Novell NetWare 5.0, released in 1998, will see a strong adoption among the 40 million customers in NetWare 4.0's installed base. Whether Novell can fetch new users for NetWare 5.0 remains an open question, however.

Novell also will try to raise its corporate fortunes through aggressive promotion of NDS. Novell has promised NDS for Solaris this year, as well as full integration between its desktop management environment and its other management tools, Z.E.N.works and ManageWise. NDS also will be integrated into networking hardware for policy-based network management through alliances Novell announced in 1998 with Lucent, Nortel/Bay and Cisco. That technology will ship in early 1999.

But vendors won't just be competing with one another's products. Vendors also will have to compete with technology that isn't a commercial product--it's just given away for free.

Commercial operating systems face pressure from the open-source movement. Linux is gaining momentum; according to one analyst's report, the number of shipped units for Linux more than tripled in 1998--a growth rate that exceeds any other operating system on the market. Linux can expect to see improved symmetric multiprocessing capabilities and possibly better clustering technologies this year.