Should Planeta Group keep and redesign the platform or should they look for something new?

The Planeta is being confronted with the question, whether he has to go with the UNIX operating system or with Microsofr Windows NT Server.



▣ ALTERNATIVES
- UNIX Operating system (existing platform)
- Microsoft Windows NT Server (new platform)

Between the two alternatives, the decision can be made according to different perspectives. I have focused my decision based on technical perspective.

If I were Planeta, my choice would definitely be UNIX Operating system for the following reasons:

▣ PRICE
The initial cost for Microsoft Windows NT server is cheaper but when it comes to expanding, the addition cost becomes higher than using the UNIX Operating system. In the long-run, considering the hardware costs, software licenses, technical support agreements, prices of upgrades/service packs, costs of hardware upgrades, etc the overall cost of choosing the NT server is higher than the UNIX Operating system.

▣ STABILITY AND SCALABIITY



UNIX handles high server loads better than Windows and UNIX machines seldom require reboots while Windows is constantly needing them. Servers running on UNIX enjoy extremely high up-time and high availability/reliability. Web sites usually change over time. They start off small and grow as the needs of the person or organization running them grow. While both platforms can often adapt to your growing needs, Windows hosting is more easily made compatible with UNIX-based programming features like PHP and MySQL. However, UNIX-based web software is not always compatible with Microsoft technologies.

▣ SYSTEM MANAGEMENT


"NT has long enjoyed an intuitive user interface for managing single systems, largely benefiting from the exceptional familiarity of the Windows look-and-feel adopted by the NT GUI. However, as users begin to deploy large numbers of servers, and geographically-dispersed servers, some of NT's architectural shortcomings for system management have become more apparent, deriving primarily from its design as a single-user system. The multi-user design of UNIX supports remote access at multiple levels, including the ability to login with a character session, via telnet, to edit configuration files, running GUI tools over the network-enabled X Window System, and now through Java versions of system management tools. NT currently enjoys none of these features.
- <> by John Kirch –

▣ CONCLUSION
To sum it up, UNIX-based hosting is cheaper in cost in the long-run, more stable, performs faster and more compatible than Windows-based hosting, and easy to manage. Therefore my choice would be UNIX Operating system over Microsoft Window NT Server.