Article from the WSJ:
January 17, 2000
No Longer CEO, Gates
Continues to Aim Big
By DAVID P. HAMILTON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Bill Gates may have given up day-to-day operations of the world's largest
software company, but his new task is no less daunting: to dominate the
Internet with Windows and Windows-based services.
When he stepped down last week as chief executive of Microsoft Corp.,
Mr. Gates said he will devote his time to helping develop what he called
"next generation Windows services," or NGWS, in Microsoft's ungainly
acronym. At the time, Mr. Gates and new CEO Steve Ballmer referred to
NGWS in sweeping but rather vague terms as an attempt to build an
"operating system" for the Internet.
In the near term, the effort is likely to produce
incremental improvements to Microsoft's Windows
operating system, such as advances in user
interfaces that could lead to computers that
recognize human voices and understand commands
given in ordinary speech. Microsoft officials also
talk about making information storage "smarter" so
that computers automatically understand how
certain information is used -- say, by recognizing
certain data as an address and automatically
formatting it correctly.
During the longer term, NGWS amounts to a
Microsoft effort to do to the Internet what it has
done in the personal-computer market by building a dominant platform and
marketing applications and services that work best with that platform. The
same way that Windows revolutionized the PC world by creating a single
operating-system platform for software applications, Microsoft hopes its
technology and services will become the first choice of burgeoning Internet
businesses, which will use them to build their own Web sites and
electronic-commerce networks.
Tough Competition
It is an audacious plan, fraught with a number of significant obstacles.
Windows faces tough competition from, among others, the free Linux
operating system, which is widely used at Internet companies. Beyond that,
the Internet is based on a set of common interfaces and protocols that aren't
dependent on any particular operating-system platform, making it far harder
for a company like Microsoft to drive the world toward its software.
"Inside the network itself, the platform, like
Windows, is irrelevant," says Michael Sheridan,
a vice president at Microsoft rival Novell Inc.,
San Jose, Calif. "We'd be crazy to discount
them, but the world has changed."
Publicly, Microsoft officials tend not to phrase
their goals in such far-reaching terms. Instead,
they talk about building an "open"
Windows-based platform that would co-exist
with other Internet technologies and waging war for Internet businesses
solely on the basis of the functionality and price of their software.
"Our overarching goal is to make it easier to write [programs] and to make it
easier to do whatever you want to do from a business standpoint," says
Charles Fitzgerald, director of business development for Microsoft's
developer organization. "What we really are is a provider of plumbing that
allows our customers to easily create whatever they want to do."
Hoping to Set a Standard
The NGWS initiative might be described as Round Two of the Internet
wars. In the first, Microsoft in December 1995 mounted a broad offensive to
counter Netscape Communications Corp.'s dominance of the Web-browser
market. Microsoft succeeded in overtaking Netscape, but still faces the
threat that most new software is being written for Web servers rather than
for PCs running Windows. With NGWS, Microsoft hopes to make sure its
operating systems and new services will become the preferred choice for
building new Web-based software.
Microsoft, Redmond, Wash., has long operated on the principle that, over
time, market forces tend to favor a single, widespread technology standard
such as Windows, which lets developers target a homogeneous customer
base and gives users a consistent way to run new applications. Control of
that standard can translate into wealth and influence, because the owner of
the standard holds an advantage in delivering new products and services
quickly.
NGWS is largely an extension of a Microsoft initiative to make Windows the
core of what it calls a "distributed network architecture" -- an effort the
company dubs Windows DNA 2000, in a clear reference to the DNA at the
core of biological life. Windows DNA 2000 starts with Microsoft's Windows
2000 operating system for PCs and servers, which ships Feb. 17, bringing
Microsoft into broader competition with dominant server makers such as Sun
Microsystems Inc., Palo Alto, Calif.
The DNA 2000 effort also encompasses a range of other Windows-based
technologies and "megaservices" -- essentially Web-based services for
companies that run Internet sites, such as Microsoft's Hotmail e-mail service
or Windows Update, the basis for a service that upgrades software
automatically over the Internet. Microsoft could leverage those services by
providing enhanced features for users of Windows-based devices, helping to
spur the adoption of Windows.
Microsoft is committed to making many of its services work with any kind of
Internet device, Mr. Fitzgerald says. However, he says Microsoft might
make some services available only to users who access them from Windows
devices.
Write to David Hamilton at David.Hamilton@wsj.com |
