Windows patches

A customer called me today to discuss about software alternatives related to future environment for a shop floor solution they have. We reviewed the main requirements and during the conversation we talked about different major environments. Suddenly we did a stop on .NET, and this was what happened.

We are running a shop floor solution that is today is available 24×7, we do not stop. I cannot go to the business and say: we have a solution that is so “cool” but we will have outages. Our 25 years old solution has not outages, I cannot propose a new solution with this basic hurdle.

Windows patches are a stopper when deciding on the use of .NET framework. You have to stop the machine and apply security patch or an upgrade or whatever.

• Why don’t use a cluster? it’s too expensive.
• Why don’t implement the solution on the cloud? they cannot rely on network, it’s more investment to ensure availability.

After that, we continued talking about Open Source solutions.