NT News Analysis

Microsoft Internet Licensing­Too Little, Too Late
Microsoft's decision to adjust its per-seat licensing policies to better reflect Internet usage is getting a cold reception from enterprise IS planners. Microsoft requires that customers purchase a seat license for every user who connects to its product. This licensing requirement includes users who connect over the Internet (for example, to SQL Server via an Active Server Pages—ASP—Web application).

Such applications can easily attract thousands, even millions, of users. This attraction is especially prevalent when corporations deploy the applications as part of their corporate Web presence. Purchasing enough licenses to satisfy the potential for any publicly deployed application would be extremely expensive, forcing many IS shops to try to avoid the problem altogether.

To help IS shops, Microsoft offers discounted licenses for certain types of connecting users. However, even with an adjusted price point, the licensing model breaks down. For example, Windows NT Server, Terminal Server Edition requires that every connecting user possess an NT Workstation 4.0 seat license. Not surprisingly, customers have openly criticized Microsoft for imposing this licensing requirement.

"It is appalling," said Robert Edwards, manager of IS services for Avalon Bay Communities in Alexandria, Virginia. "If I can't get more than 60 users on a server at once, why should I pay for more than that?"

Determining how to economically deploy Terminal Server has become a full-time job for many IS professionals. This dilemma is apparent in the emerging Application Service Provider market. Service companies that want to deploy Microsoft applications are facing the problem of how to stay within Microsoft's licensing policies and still deliver an economically viable business model.

Many customers have been hoping to get some relief from Microsoft, but Internet licensing is simply too little, too late. Internet licensing has opened the door for Microsoft's competitors--they can now compete on price as well as technology.

—Craig Barth

Microsoft to Acquire Valence Research
In August, Microsoft announced plans to buy Valence Research, the maker of the popular third-party clustering solution, Convoy Cluster. Microsoft will rename the product suite Windows NT Load Balancing Server. Microsoft plans to make the NT Load Balancing Server an integral part of the next version of Windows NT Server, Enterprise Edition to complement its cluster-server technology, which had been limited to two node failover operations across a limited set of BackOffice (Exchange and SQL Server) applications.

"This [product] addresses an area that is not addressed [in NT]: automatic load-balancing," said Ed Muth, group product manager for enterprise marketing at Microsoft. "This technology is perfectly complementary to the things we have addressed: transaction integrity and database fail-over. These two technologies fit beautifully together. Now there is a [Microsoft] end-to-end solution--we load-balance end-users coming in and provide reliable application and database service on the back end."

Convoy Cluster has long been a respected load-balancing implementation, capable of creating clusters with 32 individual nodes. The primary applications for the technology have been in the Web and email (work group and Internet) areas; however, Microsoft will waste little time in adapting Convoy Cluster for use with its Exchange, SQL Server, and Proxy Server BackOffice components. Will Microsoft include the NT Load Balancing Server in the base Windows NT Server 5.0, Enterprise Edition package? Most analysts agree that such a scenario is a possibility, given Microsoft's all-encompassing strategy for NT 5.0.

—Craig Barth

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