Let's have an ethical salesman test:
What do you tell clients about:
Surely if you're an ethical salesman, you inform your prospective clients of the truth, yes? So I'm honestly curious -- how would you respond to an informed client raising these issues?
These are serious, honest concerns that a business must be on top of. You can destroy a business by using a buggy release of a new, untested technology. I'd like to know how you answer such concerns?
The main reason I ask is that I've got past experience with other MS salesmen who promised that NT 4.0, IIS, Win2k, WinXP and now .NET are ready for prime time. Then when the problems popped up and projects had to be killed or migrated to Java, and it became apparent the salesman lied and didn't tell us about known problems, the salesman just vanished and left our company twisting in the wind. I could tell you a loooong story about this last fella who sold part of our accounting dept on trying IIS/Win2k/SQLServer 7. That one small platform gave us more trouble than all our big iron together . . .
So alieve my fears that you are just such a salesman. MS salesman are famous for lofty, untrue promises around here. How would you answer these questions?
As a systems engineer with 23 years of experience, I'm happy to answer your questions.
· Already known problems with .NET?
What problems? Name them.
· Using a 1.0 release of *anything* for mission critical work (which is considered professional incompetence in the IT industry)?
.NET has been in production systems for two years now, although it was released to the masses this past January. People complain when Microsoft doesn’t field test their products well or long enough, so for .NET they did. .Net 1.0 is a true 1.0 production version, not a BETA.
· Using a brand-new technology from MS (which clearly in the past has been a bad thing)?
That would be your personal opinion drawn from your hatred of Microsoft, not a technical evaluation of the .NET product. Visual Basic 1.0 was a great entry product. Visual C++, the same. Windows XP, another 1.0 product win. Windows NT 3.5, another first release win. Yes, many products, not just from Microsoft, suck when first released. Even Visual Studio 7 needs a service pack to fix many problems, but it still works very well, and well enough for production software. The .NET framework just had an SP.
· The problems of using IIS as your web server (which, again, is considered professional incompetence in the IT industry)?
IIS runs millions of web servers, so, again, that statement would be your personal hatred of Microsoft, and not a technical evaluation of IIS. The serious overhead of UNIX systems warrants a look at IIS. TCO is a primary reason I win sales using Microsoft products. I also enjoy the UNIX crowd giving their high-priced song-n-dance about how Microsoft cannot perform. I show the performance and the companies using IIS, and I win hands down. I love it.
· The fact that the vast majority of real servers are Unix or Linux, which won't run .NET for years?
Again, that statement is your personal opinion of Microsoft products, not a realistic evaluation. IIS and Windows 2000 server drive a large portion of the web and client/server applications. You must be ignoring the case studies proving Microsoft products and technologies work.
If Microsoft products and technologies do not work so well, how is it that Microsoft, a $55 billion company, with 40,000+ global employees, works so well using them?
I believe MS has a few problems that need addressing, but nothing that warrants dismissing their products or technologies.
For the record, I now work for Ciber as a Microsoft practice manager. We know you work for CSC, and Bush2000 and InnocentBystander work or have worked for Microsoft, just to set the table of who's who.
Okay, obviously you're a MS .NET salesman.
Too bad that's all ya got.
Happy and working on .NET projects in the enterprise. If using technolgy that works and advocating it to other people makes me a salesperson in your eyes.. so be it.
CLRGuy