Rash's Judgment: Can Microsoft Deliver?
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
The announcement last week of Microsoft's LAN Manager Version 2.0
may prove to be one of the year's significant events for business
micro users. On the other hand, it may not. Everything depends on
how well Microsoft follows through, and how well it delivers on
its promises.
 
LAN Manager 2.0 promises to bring some desperately needed changes
to the world of personal computer local area networks. The value
of some features, including the superb High Performance File
System (HPFS), is obvious. In fact, HPFS may draw people to this
product if for no other reason than the fact that it does away
with two of MS-DOS' most maddening problems: One, the
18-character file name with a three-character "extension" is a
legacy of CP/M. The other, the File Allocation Table, may be the
Achilles heel of MS-DOS.
 
It is, however, the LAN management capabilities of LAN Manager
2.0 that are of the most importance to business users. The
ability to treat servers as a group, and to use them for mutual
backup, helps insure against failure of the whole system. In much
the same way that Novell Netware mirrors its data on separate
disk drives, LAN Manager will mirror data on other servers.
Because of the value of corporate data that resides on the LAN,
careful users have always valued fault tolerance, and LAN Manager
2.0 promises to enhance that aspect beyond the rest of the
industry.
 
Microsoft, in short, promises to bring you a faster, safer LAN
operating system. The question is, what good will it do you? In
the case of LAN Manager, guesses range from "little if any" to
"the best thing since night baseball." As usual, the reality is
probably somewhere in between.
 
Unfortunately, the new LAN Manager will be missing some
capabilities that many find essential. It won't work with your
Macintosh, for example. It also won't support TCP/IP. It's not
clear whether it will support ARCNET. None of these limitations
matters to you if you're starting fresh, but they do if you
already have an installed LAN or if you're thinking of connecting
to Mac or Unix systems.
 
Government users and many corporate users must use TCP/IP, which
is available from third parties for Novell and Banyan networks.
How long before these third parties support LAN Manager 2.0? The
largest LAN installed base is ARCNET.
 
Will Microsoft support it? Should users abandon even the
limited Macintosh support they have with Novell now?
 
What will Microsoft be able to deliver, and when will it be able
to deliver? With some companies, this question would never need
to be asked, but Microsoft has had its share of premature
announcements in the past. The company has also shown an
insufficient grasp on issues important to business users. The
ludicrous security in LAN Manager 1.0 is a clear example of this.
 
Will LAN Manager 2.0 revolutionize the market? It might. If it
does what Microsoft promises, it will. And it will goad other LAN
companies into delivering similar capabilities. The problem is
Microsoft. Can it deliver, and if so, when?
 
                              --- Wayne Rash
 
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