Microsoft .Net software's hidden cost

Companies planning on moving their old programs to Microsoft's new .Net software plan had better prepare for sticker shock: Making the conversion could cost roughly half of the original development cost, Gartner says.

That may come as a blow to penny-pinching information systems departments in big companies, even those very familiar with Windows programming.

Typically, moving to a new software release isn't so costly. But, warns Gartner's Mark Driver, .Net isn't just a new release of Windows.

"People mistakenly assume the cost of upgrading will somehow be the same as going from one version of a well-established product to another. That's definitely not the case (with .Net)," said Driver, who devised the cost model.

Ari Bixhorn, Microsoft's product manager for Visual Basic.Net, disputed Gartner's conclusions. He said most conversions to .Net are about 95 percent error-free, meaning they can be completed at a cost much lower than what Gartner estimates.

Gartner, however, considered factors other than code conversions in its analysis, such as training and lost productivity. Bixhorn said he didn't see either training or productivity problems as much of a concern.

Microsoft's .Net plan includes new releases of the company's Windows operating system and other server software, along with development tools and infrastructure to make programs more Internet-aware. One new technology supported by .Net is Web services, which promise to make linking internal computer systems, and systems residing in multiple companies, far easier than current methods.

What's unclear is whether the additional cost of moving to .Net will slow Web services releases. Several technology buyers told News.com this week that they are waiting for additional standards and better compatibility before they commit to large-scale projects.

The most prominent piece of .Net released so far is Visual Studio.Net, a new version of Microsoft's development tool package, which debuted in February.

Visual Studio.Net includes new versions of familiar tools such as Visual Basic and Visual C++. But the tool bundle is radically different than predecessors. It includes a new development language called Visual C# (pronounced "see sharp"), and introduces the .Net Framework and Common Language Runtime, which are technologies for managing and running programs.

The new development tool package also ushers in ASP.Net, a specialized type of software called a class library, replacing an older technology called Active Server Pages (ASP) for creating Web applications that support new Web services technology.

Still, long term, Driver predicted that making the switch to .Net for building new programs would help lift productivity and create more efficiency within companies.

"Over the course of the lifetime of an application, .Net might give you 20 percent cost advantage or more over using the older technologies," he said. "You will be able to recover that migration cost over the course of three to five years."

Companies making the switch could do so all at once, but most will likely make the change over a longer period of time. Either way, the cost of migration stays the same.

"It's an issue of paying the 60 percent up front or over the course of three years," Driver said.

The largest cost is code conversion. Because it is difficult to calculate, the 60 percent estimate in some cases could be too low.

The cutting edge can hurt
Gartner based its migration cost estimates on Visual Basic.Net and not on its cutting-edge, Java-like Visual C# programming language. One reason: Cost. A forthcoming study will say the migration cost associated with C# would be even higher than the standard Visual Studio .Net tools, Driver said.

"Some clients have asked about going directly to C#," Driver said. "For the vast majority, going from Visual Basic to Visual Basic.Net may be painful, but it's going to be the least painful of the strategies."

C# is seen as a crucial programming language for advancing .Net. Use of the language doubled in six months, according to a March study by Evans Data.

Without a doubt, companies switching to the new tools and migrating software applications over the long haul will find the switch over the easiest, but even they face difficulties in planning. Driver used the example of a developer running the older version of Visual Studio and Visual Studio .Net over a protracted period.

"That becomes untenable at some point," he said. "You've got to make the switch. So even if you go with a hybrid model, you've got to remember that you're spreading your resources thin over two different platforms."

There are other concerns about making the switch to .Net. At the top of the list is security, Driver said. Following a January memo from Chairman Bill Gates ( news - web sites), Microsoft cranked up emphasis on security. But problems have still surfaced in recent months.

"Some people are hesitant to put Internet Information Server (behind a public Web site) because of security issues. Well, .Net doesn't really address those problems," Driver said. "IIS is still just as vulnerable with .Net running behind it as the older ASP (Active Server Pages) code running behind it."

IBM and Sun also are pushing hard into Web services, advancing their own technology strategies and tools.

Security will be an important part of that emerging market. Market researcher ZapLink said on Thursday that the Extensible Markup Language ( XML) and Web Services security market would top $4.4 billion in 2006.

You gotta drop the conspiratorial thinking. Unless somebody says they're an MS salesman there's no reason to assume otherwise. Assuming the MS sales department hasn't changed much from when I met some in 96 I doubt they could keep up with our conversations anyway, very non-technical people.

As for any duping, it's 2002, most of us who use MS software never had it sold to us, it was just there and that's what we use. We went to school and the teacher prefered MS stuff, we got a job in a MS shop and that's the end of the discussion. We can't have been duped by the salesmen, we never met one.

You insult us because when you say MS dupes the consumer you're saying they duped us. When you tell Jeeves that MS sold his company the wrong solution you're telling him that decisions he might have been involved in were wrong. You insult our integrity, knowledge and professionalism. I'm not suprised that you don't see it, I don't think it's intentional, but you do it. In almost every one of your posts you insult every one of us that works in a MS shop.

You weren't saying nice things about .Net. The best you could muster was saying it would be good someday but wasn't ready for primetime, which insults everyone that has sent or is sendinga .Net app out into production. That's not nice things, that's at best gaurded endorsement, but still with a little zinger in there to irritate people.

We didn't assume anything.

You definitely sound like you're backpeddling to avoid admitting an error. He was specific. He was clear. He simply mis-stated. And you act as if anyone who believed his mis-statement was the fool.

It can be hard to admit error, I understand.

He specifically said that his 8 weeks of coding only took 8 hours to migrate. If I had not asked any questions, that is the point he would have left this thread with. It was a specific claim, specifically about coding.

He then changed it to 1 week of work, when he realized he had not said what he meant. He admitted his error, and changed his original claim. Yet you can't even admit his original claim was wrong, instead blaming the folks who believed what was said.

As far as multiple DBs, the chaos comes in when you try to centralize all data storage, in my experience. Especially data integrity becomes a nightmare. A monolithic, centralized data store requires a corps of specialized folks to run it. I want the people who use the data to maintain the data, because they're the only ones who know what the data means and when it's bad most of the time.

As I said, as long as the architecture is done right, there is no chaos at all. Everyone can use whatever they want, as long as it supports ODBC.

I'm seeing it all over the industry. It's become the standard.

A "componentized" approach, with each dept using whatever DB 'component' best suits their needs. I don't need for force anyone to use any technology they aren't comfortable with.

In almost every way, the old "integrated" approach to software design is dying out, being replaced by 'componentized' versions. This is just more of that.

As long as the middle-tier uses only standard SQL to communicate with the DBs, it will never have to be changed. Your business logic can work on *any* DB, migrating at will.

Assuming the MS sales department hasn't changed much from when I met some in 96 I doubt they could keep up with our conversations anyway, very non-technical people.

That's what first convinced me I was talking to sales people here.

I have said nice things about .NET. It's the best web solution yet from MS. ASP.NET is a major leap forward for ASP, fully OO and all. It's definitely an upgrade for any MS-only shop.

As I have said repeatedly.

And of course I said it's not ready for prime time. That is what an *honest* assessment of .NET gives you. It's ready for small tools, small work, and assuming it does well in that area for a year or so it'll start to be taken more seriously for big work.

But to say that a brand-new, untested tech is ready to run mission-critical apps when you haven't seen a single example -- as certain folks here are doing -- is Salesmen-speak. An attempt to dupe.

It is *not* an insult to suggest that there may be better solutions out there. I can't imagine a developer saying that. I can't imagine someone coming to me and saying, "y'know, if you wrote that servlet as a C# web service, it would perform faster", and being insulted.

If someone were a Ford fan, I can't imagine them being insulted at someone saying Toyota's hold their value better, or Porsches have faster engines.

It's something very unique to the MS-only crowd. You view any suggestion that MS isn't the very best thing in the world as an insult.

That's a large part of why every single tech thread here on FR becomes an MS-only flame fest.

Object-Oriented number crunching.

For example, when I was building a report on Employee's projected availability, I built an employee object and populated that object with references to the relevant dept objects, manager object, etc.

If you were to build that report in a stored proc, you don't have that option. And the resulting spaghetti SQL is a mess. And the DB has to try and simulate all those relationships in temporary tables, which is sloooooow.

Is this really news to you?

I'm not backpeddling. I read it, I thought it meant one thing, you thought it meant something else, I was right. Spend some time in an MS only shop you to will get the secret decoder wheel. As for "admitting error" what error is there to admit? That I grocked?! I also know that when we in MS shops work on a tiered system we don't do one tier then the next, the work is done in parallel, so it's kind of hard when to say "the GUI took this long". You know how long the project took, you know you worked on the GUI during the entire length of the project in some way or another. If it was a mistatement then why is it only you didn't get it?

Maybe we have different definitions of monolithic. The accounting project I worked on the DB was 45 megs on install, no data. As for maintaining it that was nothing, we spend about 2 hours outlining a recommended backup process which took about 20 minutes to implement in SQL and that was it. As for letting people look at the data that was through our application only, you could look at the raw data but it probably wouldn't make sense. Being a fully flushed accounting/ business process app there's tons of confidential data in there that only certain people should be looking at (like SSNs) and the security was via our app.

I'm not backpeddling.

You have not yet admitted that his original statement was, in fact, incorrect. A highly misleading exaggeration.

Think about it: he made an exaggerated claim about .NET's ability to migrate existing code, and instead of correcting his claim you insulted the fool who believed his claim.

Does this give you any insight into why the claims of .NET's success have to be questioned?

As far as data integrity -- as you said, there are things like SSN that must be hidden. Then there are things like 'home address and phone number' that should be available, but will not be accurate unless the users can easily update it themselves. And things like HR 'resource requests' (job openings) that will not be accurate unless maintained by the HR folks. And things like 'estimate to complete' and 'project variance' that can only be accurate if maintained by project managers.

And on, and on.

That's already the way it works. And we've found it works *best* that way, here.

See there you go again. So according to you anybody that is using .Net for stuff in primetime has not "honestly" assessed it. That's an insult Dom. You're insulting the integrity of everybody using .Net, of everybody that thinks it is ready for their company's primetime. Just because that's not the decision you would make doesn't mean they're dishonet, it just means they aren't you.

As for mission critical stuff on new tech, like I said before: welcome to the bleeding edge. When I was working on an Exchange add on Exchange was still in beta, one of the places that was betaing our product (and therefore all Exchange) had 500 employees, they had moved the whole company over to Exchange, it was their production e-mail. Why? They were sick of the 24/7 headache lotus was giving them and at that time there was no other large e-mail system for Windows. Now personally I thought they were crazy, talk about not ready for primetime the damn thing was still in beta. But it wasn't my decision. And since they were the only large install betaing our product I really liked them, they found some good stuff. Most of these problem you think make .Net not ready for primetime won't be found if people aren't using it. Some companies (a lot of companies according to the MS list) are willing to bite the bullet. In their HONEST opinion the lumps are worth the benefits. Rather than questioning their integrity you should be paying attention to their results.

You're insulting the integrity of everybody using .Net, of everybody that thinks it is ready for their company's primetime.

That is *not* an insult. Again, if someone said they were looking at the new Ford, and I said that I thought the Chevys were better and they ought to check out the Chevy's, how is that an insult?

MS is just a company. They aren't God. It's okay so suggest that there might be better solutions out there.

People say as much about Java to me all the time. C++ is faster. SmallTalk was the original OO, and has better OO. Etc, etc.

It's this, "any mention that MS is not the best is an insult" attitude that, as I said, has made these threads almost unreadable.

I mean, look at this thread. It should have been dedicated to a discussion of .NET and architectures. Instead, it's become all about me, because the MS-only folks can't stand that I would dare suggest that Java is in certain ways better.

If the majority of people hadn't understood him you'd be correct. But the majority understood him fine.

Um, 2 people "understood" him, and both of those would argue the exact opposite of *anything* I said.

B2k even follows me to other, non-MS threads, taking the opposite side just to disagree with me.

In fact, it seems clear that everyone else took Jeeves' first comment at face value and believed it. I was the only one to ask for clarification. And it turned out I was right to.

You don't have to admit your error. I understand. It's kind of like thinking that any suggestion MS isn't perfect is an "insult".

Some people just have issues.

You're not making suggestions on future decisions, you are questioning the validity of decisions already made.

Nope. I only suggested in this thread that there are other good choices, some that might be better than the old ASP code.

The defensiveness of MS-only folks is amazing.

Any suggestion on any thread that anyone, anywhere does anything better than MS will recieve a scathing insult from Mr. B2k. Clearly MS is to be worshiped.

I've been very pro-.NET on this thread. Just not pro-.NET enough for the evangelists, who view any suggestion that MS is not the very best at everything as an insult.

That is very hard to imagine, and can't make for good developers. A good developer has to keep an open mind about technology.

It's like pounding nails with my skull. I took it at face value too, and understood it completely. Nobody else has indicated any confusion on it. You're the only one giving any indication that you didn't get it. That's not his fault. if you'll look back at the original post is says change over costs are 60% of original development. Any way you slice it Jeeves' posts contradicts that info. Now how I calculate development costs is exactly how Jeeves did, from customer wish list to ship. The developments process, and therefore costs, do not start with coding and end with testing. it's the whole caboodle, spec, design, front end, back end, testing, and having the customer send you back to the drawing board because you didn't understand them (hopefully that happens right after spec if at all).

I'm not in error. How in blazes can understanding what someone said EVER be in error?! It can't. He said it, I understood it, no error. The error was on your part because your the one that misunderstood.

The error was on your part because your the one that misunderstood.

Jeeves: "The sky is green".

Harr: "No, the sky is blue."

Discostu: "You're an idiot, Harr. When Jeeves says green he means blue, so you're dead wrong."

Yeah, sure, whatever.

And it's a personal "insult" to suggest that there are better techs than MS ones.

I think we have about killed this horse, n'est pas?

No. When you say .Net IS NOT ready for prime time, when you say that no HONEST assesment can conclude otherwise you are questioning the integrity of people that ARE using it in prime time and validity of THEIR assesment that it's ready. You're not making suggestions. You can't make suggestions about decisions that are already made, it's not physically possible. The decision is already made, suggestion time is over. It's now criticism time and you're heavy on that. And when you criticize decisions with no actual knowledge of how and why it was made that's insulting.

He didn't say the sky was green. He said the development process for his ASP front end app was 8 weeks. Development process includes a lot more than coding, just because you read it as just the coding isn't his fault or my fault. You say you've been in the business a long time, so you should know that the development process isn't just the coding, you should know that the coding process isn't just the front end, you should know that a lot of this stuff goes on in parallel and estimating how long one chunk took is just smoke and mirrors. It's not my fault you forgot everything you knew when you read the post.

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