Microsoft Windows NT Server White Paper 1
Not too many years ago, information technology professionals faced a serious
challenge in controlling the mounting costs of mainframe use. It seemed that
everyone—clerks, writers, developers, and systems administrators—all had
terminals and were using the system for everything from numbers crunching to
typing letters. Networks became bogged down, and IT professionals were given
the task of getting “nonessential operations” off the mainframe. Their decision
was to deploy personal computers in the enterprise—with emulation software for
mainframe access and local software for tasks where central processing or data
sharing were not required. Gradually, as PCs became more powerful, more and
more operations moved to the desktop. And as PC networking matured, many
businesses found that a PC-based network built on commodity hardware and
off-the-shelf software was their best business solution.
Lately, however, we’ve come full circle on this. It seems that the total cost of
ownership (or TCO)—the real cost of maintaining a distributed personal com-
puter network—is far from trivial. TCO includes the initial capital cost of
hardware and software, deployment and configuration expense, costs associ-
ated with deploying hardware and software updates, training and retraining,
day-to-day maintenance and administration, and telephone and on-site techni-
cal support. With these escalating costs in mind, Microsoft and others are
working together on several initiatives to lower the total cost of ownership of
personal computers.
TCO and the User
One of the major costs highlighted in recent reports on Total Cost of Owner-
ship (TCO), is lost productivity at the desktop caused by user error, such as
changing the system configuration and rendering the computer unworkable, or
system distractions and complexities, for example too many features or nones-
sential applications installed on the desktop. To solve these problems, system
administrators need a means to control a user’s access to key configuration
files and to features and applications that are not required to do that user’s
particular job. To be successful, this means of control must be flexible and
customizable—the system administrator must be able to control the computer
configurations of individuals and groups of users based on user job responsi-
bilities and computer literacy.
Profiles, Policies, and the Zero Administration Kit
The Zero Administration Kit (ZAK) for the Microsoft Windows NT® version 4.0
operating system is designed to help the corporate administrator address
some of the issues arising from user operations. ZAK is a set of methodologies
for deploying Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 that greatly reduces the burden of
individual desktop management for task-based workers. With ZAK, system
administrators can establish user profiles, system policies, and security to re-
duce some of the administrative costs associated with managing end-users in
an enterprise network.
ZAK’s methodologies are based on the underlying technologies and capa-
