IT is inevitable new information technologies will appear in vendors' proposals long before anyone really understands them, often including the vendors' staff.
Few of my colleagues would argue that 'Client/ Server', computing appeared on the scene about five years ago, and there have been many costly lessons learned since then.
Unfortunately, the local trait of concerning oneself with initial price rather than ultimate cost, reigns supreme when it comes to the installation of networked systems.
According to one of the few networking specialists in the territory, Bruce Fowler of Pacific Rim Systems, the buyers are becoming more sophisticated in their approach, but it is often after a few costly errors of judgment.
''The fact is that there is much more to installing client-server computing beyond the physical hardware and network,'' Mr Fowler said.
''Unfortunately, in price-conscious Hong Kong, many otherwise astute business people are buying on price alone rather than really investigating whether a given combination of software, hardware and network systems design will, indeed, satisfy their requirements.'' Perhaps one of the reasons for the frequency of this gross error of judgment is that local area networks (LANs) are most often PC-computer based. At least that is what it appears to the user. Present day lay attitudes toward PCs are that they all performsimilarly and that most are compatible.
