Microsoft wants to be one with everything

From...

May 19, 2000
Web posted at: 9:12 a.m. EDT (1312 GMT)

by Dominic Gates

(IDG) -- In February, at a Goldman Sachs technology symposium in Palm Springs, Calif., Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer declared the company's intention to produce a complete Windows solution that would herald a new generation of Internet services. Ballmer promised "something almost like an operating system ... a platform that lives in the device, in the PC, in the server and in the Internet cloud."

That solution should descend from the clouds June 1, when Microsoft is scheduled to present its strategic Internet vision, innocuously dubbed Next Generation Windows Services, or NGWS. The project is led by Bill Gates himself. In an effort to build anticipation, Microsoft has refused to disclose details.

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Despite the secrecy, it's possible to sketch an outline of NGWS from recent speeches by Microsoft execs and interviews with industry sources. Indications are that while plenty of vaporware will be pre-announced, the overall vision of NGWS won't fall short in ambition or hubris. Expect the project to draw scrutiny from the Department of Justice.

Microsoft is depending on NGWS to bootstrap the company from the desktop market onto the Internet. While Microsoft controls almost 90 percent of the desktop market, the computer industry is shifting irrevocably away from the PC. In the future, applications will run not on desktops but on Internet servers, where Microsoft's market share is only 20 percent. If it can't win the server market against Sun and Linux systems, Microsoft's industry dominance is over.

In fact, critics claim that with NGWS, Microsoft is planning -- in defiance of the recent guilty verdict in its antitrust case -- to take control of the Internet just as it now controls the PC desktop.

NGWS is the software architecture for an Internet platform that will complement the Windows operating system. The idea is to create what's known as "a distributed platform." Users will have remote access to applications and software services running on servers distributed around the Internet.

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According to Tod Nielsen, vice president for the Microsoft Platform Group that is creating NGWS, the company's Windows DNA 2000 server products -- such as Windows 2000 Server -- will be the foundation of the NGWS vision. What will be new with NGWS is a commitment to interoperability designed to attract developers to build Internet applications on the Windows platform.

Currently, making applications such as b-to-b supply chain software integrate with one another across diverse computer systems -- with one company using Windows servers, another Sun Solaris, another Linux boxes -- is a difficult task that requires developers to write custom code.

NGWS will make that easy by using a protocol called Simple Object Access Protocol, a proposed Web standard initially driven by Microsoft and now backed by IBM, Lotus and various Microsoft partners.

Why is Microsoft backing an open standard communication protocol that is platform-agnostic? According to Nielsen, the interoperability of the NGWS solution offers the 3 million-odd current Windows developers the chance to stay with Windows and also to program for the Internet.

In other words, NGWS is Microsoft's play to hold onto its developer community.

Essentially, the development of Internet applications, and the growth of the applications service provider industry, have pulled Microsoft's traditional operating system platform out from under it. NGWS represents the the software giant's response to this shift.

Microsoft also hopes to redefine its platform by offering a tightly integrated end-to-end solution encompassing desktop applications; desktop and server operating systems; the browser; server applications such as Exchange and SQL Server; developer tools; and even content generated using Windows Media Server.

Imagine, for example, the Outlook e-mail application programmed to access an online store's product catalog when birthday reminders pop up on the calendar, with Microsoft's Passport authentication service automating transactions in the background.

With those applications residing on remote servers, the integration of desktop applications and server operating systems becomes crucial. Thus the government's proposal to split the company between application and OS divisions could hamstring NGWS at the outset. The Department of Justice -- not to mention Microsoft's competitors -- may view Microsoft's NGWS plan as justification for the proposed breakup.

An end-to-end platform implies products designed to work well together -- a goal that could potentially be extended to exclude rival software. One NGWS goal is to offer Microsoft Office as a software service over the Internet rather than as a shrink-wrapped product. An Office service that doesn't run as well on a non-Microsoft operating systems is precisely the kind of outcome the proposed breakup aims to avoid.

Microsoft rivals fear a renewal of the strategy known as "embrace, extend, and extinguish." Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group that's been critical of Microsoft, suggests that exclusionary tactics are so ingrained in Microsoft's culture that Gates and company "no longer know how to operate without misusing their monopoly power.

"Microsoft has always felt threatened by the Internet, because it is an open world," says Black. "It sees it as essential to extend its presence there and move chunks of it into a proprietary world."

In Microsoft's view, NGWS will present what the company has always sold: an enormously complex integrated system, rich in added features. Competition will come from Sun servers, Oracle databases, AOL services and Linux operating systems. But only Microsoft is positioned to offer features that depend on the disparate elements of an end-to-end solution working together.

The implied message: "See what cool things we can do, if Microsoft remains intact."

But Microsoft may have difficulty getting customers to buy into the entire package. To take one example, ISPs now have a less expensive alternative to Windows 2000 in Linux Web servers. If the low-cost option works fine for their purposes, why go for more features?

Another question arises over the inescapable element of vaporware in NGWS. What Microsoft has now is a blueprint for its platform. It has yet to build it.

Gates has referred to NGWS as no less than a "five-year plan" for the Internet, which is two lifetimes in Internet time and a protracted timetable for a company that's trying to convince the world of its agility.

The company may not have that much time. Arguably, it needs new Web services now -- not in the next generation. "Five years ago it would have been perfect," says Jeremy Burton, VP of Internet platform marketing at Oracle. "But now, they'll have a lot of trouble getting traction. I can't see it being driven to a standard if Windows is at the center of it."

The idea that any company -- even Microsoft -- could take over the Internet may seem laughable. But to many observers, NGWS is no laughing matter. If it prevails, says the CCIA's Black, one day we'll see a "World Wide Web based on Windows tools and Windows architecture."

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