To Unix or NT - that is the question
When should a company move from a little local area network (LAN) that allows simple networking, such as email and possibly database access, to a fully functioning client/server environment running Unix? This is not an easy question to answer and much depends - as with all computer problems - on what it is that you want to do. For those with large database needs who think they will expand quickly, the move could be considered important. It represents a totally different kind of computing compared with what humble PC-users are used to.
Client/server computing is the foundation of much of what goes on at the high end of computing today. There are still mainframes, but Hewlett-Packard demonstrated that a US$40 billion company can be run without them. The Unix environment has shown that it is equal to any computing task. Also, Unix dominates the world of the Internet and there are few companies today that think of setting up a new computer system without also thinking about Internet connections and services.
The big players in the Unix world - Digital, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun - would never want to put a limit on either the top end or the lower end. Nevertheless, there are clear cases of small shops or companies that can run on a single machine or possibly a couple that would not need a Unix environment and all that it entails.
Only 15 years ago, many small companies could be run on 8-bit Apple II computers. They could run VisiCalc for spreadsheet work and other programs for simple word processing. In those days everything ran on floppy disks and back-up simply meant copying things on to a couple of floppies and then storing them in different places.
That is no longer true today. Even the non-Unix environment (Windows NT, for example) can get rather complex. It is possible to buy disk drives that contain several gigabytes of data for PCs. PC systems now are even using much of the same terminology as the Unix world: scalability, redundancy, data warehousing and RAID disk arrays.
But a PC-based system is unlikely to be chosen by a company that has a large database that must remain up-and-running at all times.
A Unix system is going to cost a great deal more than a simple PC system and the economic consideration is quite likely to be overpowering.
Going from a PC-based system to a Unix-based system is almost as great a step as going from a paper-based system to a silicon-based one. The biggest difference is that those who have already used a computer usually have a better idea of what an upgrade will be like.
There is usually only one question that must be answered: can you survive without the upgrade? If you struggle along with what you think is just enough, you are probably kidding yourself. At least, you are if you believe your business is going to expand. In some ways, if you are worried about the money, then perhaps you do not need it yet.
In the United States there is a term used to describe the time you have if your computer system fails: time to belly up, or the time before you go out of business. That is perhaps an important question.
