Is the Department of Justice Barking Up the Wrong Tree?
On the surface, the charges the Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed against Microsoft
may miss its intended mark: to control Microsoft’s influence on the software market.
We believe Microsoft can operate quite successfully without control of the Internet
client. In fact, it can even offer the Netscape client with little fear that it will take
business away the software giant. Microsoft need only control the development environment
and the rest falls into place. In doing so, Microsoft, the single most influential player,
steps on toes.
To understand why, we must first look at Microsoft’s basic business: operating
systems (OS). But, we must look at them from a longer-term perspective. Not only do we
have the current operating systems associated with workstations, PCs and mainframes, but
the emerging operating systems of handheld, smart card and embedded platforms. Carrying
this further, we should consider non-traditional operating systems such as workflow and
the Internet. If we are correct, then we would expect that many of the non-OS product
offerings are designed to be key components of existing or future operating systems.
How does one insure that an OS becomes standard? By controlling the development
environment. If a company supplies development tools that favor an OS and the tools become
standard, then the resulting software will have its roots firmly paced in the target OS.
Further, if the tool vendor adopts a write once deploy on multiple platforms marketing
position, it guarantees that the developers will adopt the remaining operating systems as
a standard.
A standard operating system, in itself, is good. It defines a platform upon which
developers can provide software with the assurance that there will be a significant market
into which to sell the application. This holds true for a developer based applications
environment. But, this will change in the future.
As software continues to mature and end users are empowered, the tools for software
development will merge with those used for other purposes, such as word processing. In
this case, the Web page just becomes another document type. It is the reduction in these
areas of competition and the incorporation of value added tools for the operating system
that cause problems..
Where does this leave us with Microsoft? We believe that Microsoft is currently
targeting the following hardware platforms and is releasing tools that will ensure its
future.
Desktop and Servers – This includes Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT. The
Visual C++ and Visual Basic programming languages are the key development tools Microsoft
uses to ensure the continued presence on the desktop and server. While developers have the
ability to program in a neutral version of C++ in order to make the transfer of code
easier, the ease of developing Windows specific code as well as the ability to upgrade the
operating system make vanilla code difficult to enforce.
Internet - The server controls the Internet, including its operating systems and the
software used for the server. Within this realm, Microsoft has a strong challenge from the
Unix vendors. To compete with these vendors, we believe Microsoft has adopted a two-prong
strategy to ensure that a Microsoft Web server (NT based) is the software platform of
choice for ISPs. First, is gain a significant percentage of the desktop with Internet
Explorer. With features that tie into the server software, it expects that, in part, the
desktop will drive the server. This is the target of the DOJ.
The second and more formidable approach is to use development environments to work with
proprietary services provided by a Microsoft server. In this area, Microsoft with the
FrontPage 97 and FrontPage 98 extensions are used to entice site hosting services to use
an NT based system rather than one powered by UNIX. But Microsoft is not finished. The
upcoming Microsoft Office 2000, with the increased ease of Web publishing further brings
developers closer to the Microsoft fold. Does competition exist here? Yes, the developers
of the remaining development tools; the writers of Java applets and the implementers of
CGI script all have alternatives. But notice: Microsoft has clearly placed it bets with
non-technical developers – the end users.
Consumer computing – The biggest market to conquer is computing in the home. To
achieve this Microsoft has a respectable showing of home titles as well as providing
functions such as Direct X in the operating system to support games and highly interactive
software. While the Windows CE initiative is currently directed to the handheld market it
targets the television set top box and, further down the line, embedded systems. Windows
CE is not the first time Microsoft has introduced operating systems for this market.
Earlier, it began the development of such systems for both the office and home as separate
efforts. Now, with software designed for the handheld market, it will have applications
that can run on these new platforms.
This is what any corporation would do under the circumstances. Mainframe vendors did it
in the early day of computing and proprietary development environments are doing so today.
Microsoft is faced with a serious problem: is it possible to control the operating system
but leave the tools to others? While the answer is yes, it will be difficult to achieve
the penetration of new environments.
If the DOJ is able to limit the involvement of Microsoft in new computing directions it
will have, initially, a detrimental effect. A new standard operating system must emerge, a
process that will require three to five years to accomplish. Throughout this period,
different computing technologies and models will emerge. Thus, the emergence of these new
platforms will be delayed by four to six years as the OS and development tools vendors
jockey for position.
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