ENTERPRISE OPERATING SYSTEMS

The operating system isn’t only the software that runs your computer anymore. In the typical computer-driven organization today, the operating system on your desktop computer, notebook PC and server is part of a much larger platform for applications and data that extends across the LAN and WAN and out onto the Internet.

An OS cannot be an island unto itself—it must work with the rest of the digital enterprise. Enterprisewide applications require an enterprise operating system.

So what does it take to be an enterprise OS? Some basic requirements common to all enterprise systems set enterprise OSes apart from ordinary desktop operating systems and old-fashioned network OSes. A check list of common must-have attributes includes four things:

Stability. Like that battery-powered rabbit, an enterprise OS has to keep going and going without a great deal of attention. An enterprise OS should be multithreaded and multitasking. It should allow for installation of new applications without a system shutdown and should remain running in the event of an application crash. A blue screen of death is not an acceptable device for handling application errors.

Most Unix OSes are about as stable as they can be. They rarely require a reboot after installation of software, and, if applications are designed properly, will rarely encounter core dumps or system hangs. But that can be a big if.

Microsoft Corp. has done much to make its Windows NT 4.0 more stable over the last few years, releasing no fewer than four service packs to address issues such as memory leaks. A fifth, optional service pack is now entering beta testing. And Microsoft has lined up partners that pledge to work toward 99.9 percent availability for NT. Still, there are those who question whether NT is ready for bullet-proof solutions.

Novell NetWare 5 has significantly improved NetWare’s stability; it is now multithreaded. In earlier versions of the NetWare OS, applications that ran on the server had to be fashioned into NetWare Loadable Modules. The NLM model had some problems, including occasional incompatibilities between NLMs.