Microsoft .Net software's hidden cost

Yahoo ^ | Sat Jun 22,11:11 AM ET | Joe Wilcox

[Dominic Harr]

Microsoft .Net software's hidden cost
Sat Jun 22,11:11 AM ET

Joe Wilcox

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.

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According to a new cost model devised by Gartner, the cost of moving older Windows programs to .Net may range from 40 percent to as much as 60 percent of the cost of developing the programs in the first place.

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.

[discostu]

Dude, you're such a goombah. I still say the back end was involved in the original 8 week production time, along with things like spec review and design which tends to drag things out a bit. And I still think it's incredibly rude to shave people's estimates on project you know nothing about.

I'm not selling anything. I haven't worked with .Net and since I think n-tiered distributed applications are annoying I hope I never do. You're the only one on these threads that ever tries to sell anything, and what you're trying to sell is your own brilliance which it turns out is the ultimate vaporware. If anybody says anything good about anything from MS you're all over them and accuse them of everything under the sun. You really need to ask your shrink why you have such a hard-on for MS. If you can't look at that list of companies using .Net and realize that the product is doing pretty good then you clearly have issues, deep expensive issues. That's nobody's problem but yours. I always worry about people that spend long hours complaining about everyone around them, especially when they're conservative, armed nutjobs are inherently more frightening than unarmed nutjobs.

[rdb3]

How do they know that Microsoft won't exercise its IP "rights" and crush them through litigation and not the marketplace?

That's why I'm studying it like hell right now! ;-)

[discostu]

Really, that's funny. I used to be a hardcore MS-basher. Spending time on FR around the Macheads and the Harr's is what changed my tune. The more of their ravings I read the more I started to question the sanity of defacto hatred of MS. Since that reconsideration I've decided that MS isn't the best company on the planet, they play orugh and sometimes even illegal, and their software has issues, but overall they aren't too bad and their stuff doesn't suck half as bad as the bashers say it does.

[rdb3]

AS I have posted before, the market will most likely always be split and the competition is very healthy for both sides. Without .NET pushing Java and Java pushing .NET, not much will ever get done. I actually wish another large third party would join the market with a third competing technology. Frankly, I don't believe that the best ideas can be incorporated into only two product lines. Open source certainly is another venue for ideas, but we really need more.

YES!

Hats off to you, P.A. That's what I'm talking about. To be totally honest, I want .NET to succeed. That forces Sun to step up. It forces OpenSource to get better. It's a win-win-win as far as I'm concerned.

Geeks like me want to battle it out at the workstation and in the cleanroom, NOT the courtroom.

Let the games begin!

[rdb3]

AS I have posted before, the market will most likely always be split and the competition is very healthy for both sides. Without .NET pushing Java and Java pushing .NET, not much will ever get done. I actually wish another large third party would join the market with a third competing technology. Frankly, I don't believe that the best ideas can be incorporated into only two product lines. Open source certainly is another venue for ideas, but we really need more.

Please see my #84.

[rdb3]

I hear you. And don't expect me to sling arrows at you for this opinion, either.

The way I see it, whatever works for you is what you should use. That's how I operate.

[discostu]

You're far to sane for these threads. Run now while you still can.

[rdb3]

Ever hear of business requirements? Systems analysis? Changing user specifications? A good portion of that 8 weeks was irreducible, regardless of platform.

Add to that unreasonable managers who can't make up their minds on how they want an app to work and dissatisfied users who will complain no matter how well the apps actually works.

Thankfully, I'm now self-employed! ;-)

[Mr. Jeeves]

I still say the back end was involved in the original 8 week production time, along with things like spec review and design which tends to drag things out a bit.

You are correct. Coding the business logic in the SQL Server stored procedures took a good part of the time. For the record it is an investment reporting application - a lot of crosstabulation and summarization. Some of the logic came from a legacy MS Access reporting system, other parts had to be written from scratch.

Total application development time: 8 weeks.

Total traditional ASP coding time: About 1 week.

Total ASP.NET conversion time: 8 hours.

Total time spent on three upgrades since: About 1 hour.

The decision to build a 2-tier application was a deliberate part of the design, as a 3-tier architecture would have been overkill for this project. Scalability was not a design consideration - any growth in the database size will be overwhelmed by future `increases in hardware speed.

The typical run time for the set of eight SQL Server stored procedures kicked off by ASP.NET is about 10 seconds. Maybe if I had used Java and an application server it would run in 5 seconds. Hey, a 50% increase! A new benchmark for Oracle's ads...LOL!

Now y'all can argue from a coherent set of specs...

[Scott McCollum]

Hey, I'm just wondering... I've seen no posts on FR about the hidden costs of switching everyone from Windows/Office over to Linux/Star (most costs incurred by expensive to keep and difficult to work with open source training/support professionals).

I've seen few words on FR about the Alexis de Tocqueville Foundation's study correctly noting that it's difficult to characterize Linux and other open source software as inherently more secure since anyone and everyone can look at the source code.

I have seen a lot of conspiracy theories about all the illegal behind-the-scenes Micro$oft does, but I've never seen anything paranoid regarding open source software (like the idea that since open source software "powers" the Internet, a left wing group of anarchists could use that code to write a crippling virus that destroys all Internet communication and commerce in protest of globalization - which is much more plausible that Micro$oft sabotaging Real Player by including Windows Media Player bundled in the OS).

I'm just throwing that out for everyone.

[rdb3]

Well, 'tu, you might be right. Since I live, eat, breathe, and sleep on this stuff, my pragmatism may be a bit of a wet blanket for some.

[Bush2000]

The 'Windows Forms' are more akin to the 'Java Web Start' tech. Downloading an app that executes locally on the client as a local app. Very, very different from an Applet executing only in a browser, with no ability to affect the local machine.

The noticeable difference, Harr, is that Java applets run within a browser frame. These WinForms don't. As for security, WinForms apps have no capability on the local machine: They are constrained by the CLR. They can't read/write files outside of their scratch directory. In short, they can't do anything to destabilize the machine.

[discostu]

You know he's going to think we worked this out in Freepmail. Investment stuff, a little hairy but nothing viscious. That's about how I was seeing it. DB design and execution are the important part, that's the actual data, fronts aren't too hard. And of course crunching number back in SQL is the right answer, if only because that's probably a bigger computer than the box the front end is working on.

It'll be interesting to see what he says now that we actually have enough info to be throwing out some estimates.

[discostu]

We've had some threads on the AdTF stuff, they were pretty vicsious. Those kind of revolved around out of the box AdTF is right, but every Unix administrator in the known world has his own security code that he patches in and does NOT distribute. So that's kind of a toss up.

Of course you realize that since you've brought up training and conversion costs that makes you evil, clearly a MS dupe probably in their pay and sent out to secretly talk up their clearly inferior products base on lied and FUD... at least that's what the bashers always say.

[PatrioticAmerican]

"Actually, a developer would be encouraged to share their opinions and experiences with new technologies, especially one like this that is trying to gain acceptance. "

Harr, you are sounding like a total computer geek and not a consultant. Building apps is far more about the business and not the technologies. Such things as confidentiality are seriously important. Part of that is not publicly disclosing information. Doing so may jeopardize your market position by letting your competitors know what you doing such that they may also do it. Also, clients may not appreciate your public relationship with them. Some companies prefer to have people believe that they are completely responsible for their computer systems. Discretion is paramount. You asking for confidential information is tantamount to journalists asking the Defense Department for the secret war plans and complaining when they don’t get it. Any company than can release large project information does in the form of a press release, in corporate press packet, or through the various corporate communications mediums; all of which are publicly available and usually on the company’s web site. Again, you really need to do your own research; it is an easy thing to do.

[Bush2000]

The DB has to build temporary tables and does all the number crunching in a very, very inefficient manner, processing data relationally. In an language like C# or Java, you do number crunching in an OO manner, optimized to the specific report to be churned. For any complex report, the DB will be the absolute slowest way to number crunch possible.

That's an interesting straw man, Harr, but it has little to do with anything. Jeeves never said he was doing his report-formatting in the stored procs. He said he's retrieving the basic data and then dumping it into documents on the middle tier. How you twisted that to mean he was doing the reports on the backend tier is a mystery.

[Bush2000]

I said it would take *him* a week, if he were not very experienced with Java. But it sounds like *I* could do it in a day or two.

This is precisely the reason I'd never hire you, Harr. You confuse writing the code with the entire application development process. Coding is one of the last things you do. In a lot of ways, it's the least important.

Forget it, dude. Once again, a thread has boiled down to MS-only people trying to sell *me* on MS solutions, while everyone else has abandoned the thread.

Nobody's trying to sell you anything, Harr. You're entrenched in your ignorance. No, most people are here to prevent you from spreading more lies and making estimates that pull out of your rear end...

[PatrioticAmerican]

Know what would REALLY be cool? IBM creating a mainframe version just for mainframes! Imagine the big iron ideas that have yet to introduced into the server market, and there are some. I have always loved microcomputers, but I also was working with mainframes and knew there were serious differences.

[PatrioticAmerican]

Oh, we've trashed that subject as well. ;>

[Dominic Harr]

I still say the back end was involved in the original 8 week production time, along with things like spec review and design which tends to drag things out a bit.

You appear to have been correct, and I was incorrect in this one detail.

But I was still right about the point -- what was done in ASP could have been done better or faster in Java, but he was working for an MS-only shop and prevented from using a better solution if it wasn't an MS product.

What took 1 week in ASP could have been done better in Java or ASP.NET in 1 day -- what it actually took to do it in ASP.NET, which does indeed develop as fast as Java. It still seems clear that he was paid to use an inferior MS solution when a better, non-MS solution was available, and eventually had to upgrade that solution. But he was not allowed to upgrade until MS had made something better.

So you were right about the one detail -- it wasn't 8 weeks of work that should have taken a day, it was 1 week of work that should have taken a day. I did misunderstand that one part of the estimate. As I made clear to you, I was only talking about the ASP part, and asked him that specifically. I apparently misunderstood when he said it took 8 weeks, and thought he was referring to the piece that was replaced in a few hours, as he said. His original statement was led me awry, and I missed that.

Now I wonder, are you likewise willing to admit where you were wrong about the main debate point?

Or are you only worried about the small things, and not the big ones?

The funniest thing here is, I am *trying* to be positive about .NET here in this thread. But you folks have made the entire thread an attack on me. I think, looking back, I've been polite and honest. I've even been up-beat on .NET.

I think .NET is a good, new tech. Both Java and ASP.NET beats the heck out of the old ASP. C# is the best MS technology yet for web development.

But the interesting thing about the MS-only crowd is how they won't allow me to even qualify my support with caution. Their defensive reaction makes me think .NET may be in some trouble I'm unaware of. Salesmen who are confident in a product usually can't wait to talk your ear off giving you details about their product.

You can't have missed how they're attacking any suggestion that a brand new tech like .NET has issues. I haven't said one negative thing about .NET here in this thread, have I?

I do, indeed, feel Java is better. Is that opinion just not allowed in your world? I do feel that .NET is good. I've been very, very clear.

Is that just not pro-.NET enough for you? Is it necessary to be a complete cheerleader, in your mind?

I'm not here selling anything -- especially not my own brilliance. I'm here asking questions, and trying to encourage people to look into .NET.

They *are* here selling .NET, and as such are making promises about .NET that are unsubstantiated. I am only asking them *about* those promises, asking for some sort of subastatiation beyond press releases.

I'll be interested to see your response. I've been polite, honest and forthright. It appears you've been anything but, up until now.