The Operating System
I recently gave a talk on operating systems, not from a technical perspective, but more around some of the softer issues with the purpose to raise some questions around practices in this market. The ones I decided to include are listed below with a few key questions and ideas on what each point is about.
Most vendors will make it as easy as possible for you to get hold of the operating system, it is after all to their benefit. Think of the main operating systems suppliers out there, is the version you can get today, without needing to fork out money, the same production version you would receive if you ordered a copy from the vendor ? Think Sun Solaris, Redhat Enterprise Linux, Windows, IBM AIX, HP HP/UX.
Life cycle – Where do you live on the curve, fast changing hungry for new functionality or slow and deliberate with as few as possible changes ? Both these conditions actually exist in most organizations, do your operating system cater for this ?
Community – Is there a vibrant community around your operating system, from kernel developers to application developers and all the way to end-users ? Remember innovation happens elsewhere, if there is no open community around the operating system, possibility of innovation is limited to a small group of individuals.
Observability – How open, friendly and visible is the inner workings of the operating system ? If a problem arises, performance or otherwise, is it possible to peek deep inside the operating system to identify the problem or is guess and re-install the standard attempt at fixing issues ?
Momentum – Is the operating system on its way up or down in terms of momentum, are applications being ported to it or away from it ? Is the number of sites, blogs and discussions around it increasing or decreasing ?
Virtualization – Does the operating system natively provide the tools to virtualize workloads ? At what cost does this come, free and part of the operating system or at a per instance cost ?
Security – Is security a major focus of the operating system or an afterthought ? Are there masses of 3rd party software available to plug the holes that should never have existed in the first place ?
Integrity – Does the operating system provide built in mechanisms to verify that data stored is still the same data when it is read ? Does this come as an add-on or as part of the base operating system, is there cost involved ?
Compatibility - Are newer versions of the operating system compatible with past releases ? How painful and costly is it to move to the next release, does the vendor guarantee , not just verbally, that this compatibility exists ?
Barriers to Exit - What would it mean if I stopped paying support and maintenance to the operating system vendor ? Would you legally still be able to keep the operating system running or is the license to use the operating system tied to the maintenance contract ? What functionality in the operating system would not be legally available in this case ?
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