Software titans battle over Internet groupware
Source: Reuters
LAS VEGAS, The Reuters European Business Report via
Individual Inc. : A few years ago, one company led the market
for an exciting new technology called groupware, which enabled
workers at different locations to use computers to collaborate on
business projects.
But the rise of the Internet has changed all that, creating new
opportunities for using such software more widely and setting the
battleground for a clash for a share of one of the fastest-growing
markets in the personal computer industry.
The market is driven by corporations' desire to use cheaper,
easier-to-use Internet technologies to tie together far-flung and
incompatible computing systems, a market some now estimate
may reach $10 billion by the year 2000.
The trend has helped fuel the explosive growth of Netscape
Communications Corp. <NSCP.O>, which burst onto the public
market in August 1995 and has been turning its focus to using
Internet technologies in the lucrative corporate market for
building the internal networks known as intranets.
Intranets use relatively inexpensive software to link together
people across an organisation and allow access to information via
a common interface, or browser.
Netscape's abrupt rise jolted software giant Microsoft Corp.
<MSFT.O>, which has been rushing to incorporate Internet
technology throughout its products, and International Business
Machines Corp.'s <IBM.N> Lotus Development Corp., which
pioneered the groupware market with its Lotus Notes products.
At Comdex, the computer industry's largest trade show, all three
companies have unveiled strategies aimed at attracting major
corporate customers to their products.
Lotus, which is trying to revive its early lead with its Domino
computer network software and a package of collaborative
programmes like spreadsheets and word processors, promises to
use IBM's deep pockets to fund its campaign.
The battle next year is expected to be even more intense than the
skirmish last summer between Microsoft and Netscape over
Microsoft's entry into the Web browser market, in which
Netscape retains a nearly 80 percent stake.
``If they thought the browser war was bloody, just wait,'' Lotus
President Jeff Papows said earlier this week. ``This will be a
whole new level of bloodiness.''
Although Lotus has moved to add Internet features while
slashing prices on its software for the Notes market, the roughly
$700 million in research and development spending it touts is
only a fraction of Microsoft's $2 billion-plus total research and
development budget in fiscal 1997 alone.
And while Lotus officials privately say they would rather have
the problem of reducing prices dramatically than having to build
sophisticated corporate networke systems from scratch, new
Internet technology offers compelling savings.
Netscape Chief Executive Jim Barksdale, in his keynote address
at Comdex on Wednesday, identified some corporate customers
who he said had reported up to 2063 percent return on
investment by deploying intranets using Netscape products.
Microsoft Chief Executive Bill Gates said his company will focus
its resources on lowering the cost of corporate computing this
year with the same intensity it applied last year in adapting
Internet technologies.
Analysts said that by bundling many of its Internet-based
technologies with its latest operating systems, Microsoft may
have an upper hand in releasing new products and with
customers who are committed to remaining on the leading edge.
But even in the personal computing market where Microsoft's
operating systems dominate, fewer than one-third of company
machines run the latest versions of Microsoft Windows software
needed to fully utilize its groupware features, they add.
``It's less a competition for (software) suite sales than it is for
corporate dollars,'' said Morgan Stanley & Co. analyst Mary
Meeker, who sees two paths for corporate customers.
One set may chose to upgrade all its software to the latest
Microsoft products, including Microsoft's newly launched Office
97 suite.
Meeker said this option is costly.
Another set of customers, Meeker said, could chose to keep their
investment in existing computers and, using Netscape's products
on the 17 different systems it supports, build a system combining
these machines relatively quickly.
[11-21-96 at 17:00 EST, Copyright 1996, Reuters America Inc.] |
