Background
Business Application which encompasses ERP,SCM,CRM,HCM has to constantly focus on improving availability, manageability, performance, scalability and not the least security. Again given our strong belief in enterprise value maximisation, total cost of ownership was also very important.
So selection of appropriate platform was absolutely essential. We had to also ensure that we were not joining computer trend which turns out of to be evolutionary dead end. Of course our selection of C++ as development language ensured that this risk was minimal. (Ultimately Android had to provide native C++ support to its operating system to compete with far superior rival Apple IOS. Where Android wins is support for large variety of hardware which is corporate decision rather than technical feasibility). We knew we could switch to winning operating system with extra efforts. Anyway in earlier versions we had code which could run both on Windows and Unix.But we did not want our customers to find their investments going astray.
Performance
We had developed our first business solutions on Unix which was and continues to be undoubtedly highly scalable operating system which benefited from being open source with great development input from University at Calfornia at Berkeley. But with experience of developing on both Unix and NT using C and C++, we were convinced that Window’s server systems incorporated latest technologies like multi-threading. Having decided on HTTP as basic protocol for client-server communication, we compared Internet Server API with CGI interface option on Unix. And obvious winner was Windows given design superiority of ISAPI vs brute force of CGI.
Total Cost of Ownerhsip
Around 2002-3,when we were working on our design goals for our solution there was raging debate between TCO and scalability of Windows vs Linux Platform. With training in Cost Accounting we realised that most of the Total Cost of Ownership were biased based on who has initiated it.KamatSoft eValueMax v10.0 was designed to be scalable operating system which is user-friendly. Windows undoubtedly was and continues to be most user-friendly operating system for business applications but would it be scalable. We started development of business applications with UNIX soon found that users would require lot of support which would increase total cost of ownership and defeating primary goal of ease of use.
User Experience and Manageability
We knew Windows was clearly going to be winner given its user experience. On the other hand there was steep learning curve for most of the users for Unix/Linux. There was hardly any training schools on Unix in India.