Microsoft: The Future of Windows

June 1993

Microsoft is so big a share of the desktop and server operating system market that understanding not just where Microsoft stands, but what they plan has become an important issue. Amy Wohl recently spent two days at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington head-quarters and then attended the NT announce-ment activities at Spring COMDEX in Atlanta, so what follows is based on trying to take a variety of different inputs from multiple sources and from them forge a vision of what is likely to happen, how that will affect the PC market and its users, and what you should do to take optimal advantage.

Microsoft's plan is to make the Windows
environment so all-encompassing
that few users will feel the
need to look elsewhere

Microsoft has a plan and that plan is to make the Windows environment so attractive and all-encompassing that very few users will feel the need or the desire to look elsewhere.

On May 24, Microsoft has five announced DOS and Windows products for desktops and servers. This does not include the Microsoft At Work strategy, Microsoft's June 9 announcement for an all-encompassing office equipment interface and interconnect strategy, which we will get to shortly. These desktop and server products are (see Future of Windows chart)

(1) MS-DOS 6.0, still DOS, but an enhanced version with lots of new features, designed to keep the DOS users happy (that is, to keep them from wandering off to other non-Microsoft platforms or from buying too much in the middleware market, where Microsoft wants to have a say about strategy, as a way of controlling future directions).

the entire desktop application
market has become
one big Windows party

(2) Windows 3.1 is the latest version of Windows and even with all the current attention focused on NT, this is Microsoft's flagship 1993 product. Microsoft seems to be closing on 30,000,000 copies and the entire desktop application market has become one big Windows party, where even graphics applications that formerly debuted on Macintoshes and came only later, if at all, to the PC, now prefer Windows first. Software developers have learned how to count and this is the main market!

(3) Windows for Workgroups provides additional features for Windows user in small (up to 25 or so) groups of users, such as calendar and scheduling, shared files, and routing.

(4) Windows-NT is the flagship for the future. It offers full 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking and robust features normally found only in higher level (host-sized) operating systems. No wonder. It was designed by Dave Cutler a former Digital Equipment Corporation operating systems expert, and implemented by a huge team of Microsoft supertechies.

(5) Windows NT Advanced Server is the server version of NT. Microsoft is deliberately offering the operating system in two versions. This permits them to ship the less complex NT desktop version sooner and it also permits the NT Desktop to be smaller and priced less expensively than NT Server.

In 1994, you should look for Microsoft to take the next version of Windows and MS-DOS (we've labeled them Windows 4 and MS-DOS 7 in our chart, but they could be called something else when they surface) and find several different ways to package them. That's what the vertical packaging bar with its double arrows means. We'd expect them to offer the products separately as normal upgrades but also to offer them bundled together, probably with even more features, as the Chicago operating system, going forward. Also, you might expect an upgrade for Workgroup for Windows or a repackaging where Workgroup becomes an add-on for the Windows environment.

start looking for Microsoft
to push a Windows-
compatible hardware standard

In the Chicago timeframe you should also start looking for Microsoft to push a Windows-compatible hardware standard -- similar to the software tests for an IBM-compatible PC we've used in the past -- to replace the IBM-compatible PC standard. This would fit right into the plans of AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) who's decided to build chips that are compatible at the software level to software that runs on Intel chips, but totally different from a hardware design point of view. Oh brave new world!

In 1995 (or, with luck, late 1994), Microsoft hopes to begin shipping Cairo, its object oriented new operating system. Just as IBM can promise that those who write OS/2 2.1 applications will be able to successfully run them on Taligent in the future, Microsoft assures developers and users that those who write to the Win 32 API and OLE 2.0 will have applications that not only run on Cairo, but exploit its capabilities. That is because Microsoft decided to use the OLE 2.0 object model as the object model for Cairo, too. IBM, of course, has also raised the ante with the announcement of its SOM (System Object Model) Toolkit; applications developed with SOM will run on today's operating systems, but take advantage of tomorrow's OO environments.

Microsoft has begun to describe Cairo publicly, no doubt to begin accustoming the market to the object model as well as to surround itself with an aura of objectivity. In a flattering profile of its developer, covering nearly a full page in the Business section of the Sunday June 6 New York Times, Microsoft offered several interesting bits of information about the operating system that will eventually follow NT: (1) In order to preserve a single approach to objects, Cairo set aside its own object approach (which may have been more advanced) and has completely adopted OLE 2.0. This seems a further indication that Microsoft's claims that Writing to OLE 2.0 and the Win 32 API's guarantees a Cairo-compliant application are indeed true. (2) Cairo is firmly described as a 1995 event which means Taligent better hurry if it hopes to beat Cairo out the door with any marketing time to spare.

Microsoft is now in control of most of the desktops on which computing activity of any sort -- business of any size, educational, home business, or entertainment -- gets performed. That is partly because of chance (they were in the right place at the right time), partly because of mistakes (DRI's and IBM's, among others), partly because of smart, hard work (Microsoft's), and partly because of the vagaries of the marketplace and the choices it made (all of us).

Microsoft has scored a triple play

In the last month, Microsoft has scored a triple play, announcing Windows NT, the new multitasking 32-bit version of its operating system, Microsoft At Work, a set of interfaces and API's to enhance office equipment including telephony and interconnect it to computers and computer software, and is believed to be on the verge of consummating an alliance with Time Warner and Tele-Communications Inc. ( the largest U.S. cable TV company) to form a company called Cablesoft that will lead to establishing a standard for the transmission of interactive television programs. Never has a single company had so broad an influence over so many areas of computing, information, and entertainment.

Basically, Microsoft wants to make Windows a very durable and scaleable operating system environment. This would be convenient for users and developers, because the traditional platform-to-platform discontinuities in design, development, and usage would disappear. It would also be very convenient to Microsoft, who would end up even richer and more powerful than they are today.

Microsoft already had a plan for a scaleable Windows Operating System Family, extending from subnotebooks to servers. While they would initially use two operating systems (DOS and NT), as Win 32 technology supplanted older forms of Windows, and Microsoft converged the DOS and Windows environments, both users and developers would benefit from consistent user interfaces, development environments, and facilities for application deployment. (Windows Operating Systems).

Now Microsoft is extending this strategy downward into those portions of the office workplace which have previously existed separately -- and at some disadvantage of distance -- from desktop computing systems, with Microsoft At Work, a set of API's and interfaces that permits individual office products (such as printers, copiers, fax machines and telephone systems) to be enhanced and interconnected to computing systems. As with other Windows products, the goals are making everything easier to use -- thus reducing complexity and expanding the potential, as well as moving out the boundaries of seamless interconnectivity.

Microsoft is At Work

If you thought Microsoft was already rich and powerful enough, guess again. On June 9, in a splashy New York City announcement that included a number of important partners, Microsoft made a move to extend the Windows API's to support attachment to (and control of, if you want to look at it that way) many common types of office equipment. Analysts are immune to announcement hype by now and we know that partnership headcounts fade fast if nothing mutually beneficial is going on, but we were impressed by Microsoft's considerable efforts, extending back over a period of nearly five years, to approach this problem and put together a smooth and masterful strategy.

Microsoft At Work is a software architecture which will allow providers of fax machines, copiers, printers, handheld devices (from PDA's to personal communicators to high-end pagers), telephone systems, network services, semiconductor chipsets, PC peripherals (like fax and fax/modem cards), and third party software to be able to easily access information and interconnect across communications environments. Microsoft At Work both enhances the usability of the products themselves, through better graphical user interfaces, and also provides connectability to Windows-based computers, printers, and other peripherals.

Functionality is based on five components:

Microsoft At Work Operating System: A small operating system with a real-time, pre-emptive, multitasking environment supporting the Windows API's.

Microsoft At Work Communications, supporting communication with both the Windows PC environment plus secure digital document transmission plus compatibility with the Windows Messaging API (MAPI) and the Windows Telephony API of WOSA.

Microsoft at Work Rendering: Support of high-quality, high-performance rendering of documents, with full support for formatting, fonts, and high performance, all in 50K of code. The rendering component supports legacy systems and existing fax standards, but at a higher level of rendering, including lines, text, commands, and color, with more compression, better output quality and the ability to translate to an editable document.

Microsoft At Work GUI: The Graphical User Interface for Microsoft at Work is not Windows, but a panel interface, designed to help the user manage an office device, but with a higher level of functionality and ease of use than is currently supported, including substantial on-line help.

Windows Desktop Software: Microsoft At Work will allow the Windows Applications to be extended (and also Microsoft's Macintosh software), by offering a rich printing architecture, security, extending mail to include fax and phone, and manage the administration of office devices (such as paper out, machine malfunction, etc.).

Products (which might cost a few dollars more than current devices, more for enhanced hardware and memory than for Microsoft licenses), are expected to start appearing in the market in late 1993 and early 1994. This is the most impressive part of the announcement, since such alliances are usually long on handshaking and backpatting and short on near-term deliverables. Microsoft has already signed up more than 50 partners, and is sure to sign up more. The question now is whether and when the products will arrive, and whether we will agree that the small price increments partners are likely to charge are justified by the better interfaces and enhanced connectability. Also, Microsoft is used to markets greeting their products with short buying cycles and technological adulation. Buyers of copiers and fax machines tend to keep them until they're worn out or obsolete, rather than replacing them to gain additional features. Microsoft may need to be more patient than usual to succeed in this venture.

At even lower levels of computing intelligence, Microsoft is also extending its interests into the home market, with its preliminary foray into participating in defining and marketing the Cablesoft interactive TV product. (They will shortly be joined in this competitive market by others, including IBM and Apple as well as Hewlett-Packard; 3DO has already announced and shown product for this market.)

You can see the grand scheme of things so far in the figure: Microsoft Extends Windows. All this adds up to a market of fabulous size, so expect lots of sign in, by vendors eager to share the glory and lots of complaints by others not at all eager to see Microsoft succeed in yet another market.

Microsoft is trying to move beyond
the desktop, having an equal -- or greater --
impact on the server, the enterprise,
the office, and the home

Microsoft is now trying to move beyond its impact on the desktop, to having an equal -- or greater -- impact on the server (with NT), the enterprise (via NT and the move to client/server computing and "rightsizing"), and then on the office as a whole, through the new Microsoft At Work strategy and the home through Cablesoft. Of course, other vendors, from IBM and its allies like Apple to the entire open systems/UNIX community are likely to find themselves fiercely competing with this attempt by Microsoft to extend its power and control. In the end, it will be the users -- as always -- who will decide whether putting so many eggs in a single basket is too risky, or whether Microsoft's alluring Pot of Gold of a single, scaleable environment is simply irresistible.

Microsoft and Workgroup Computing

While we're on the subject of Microsoft, we thought we'd add a summary of their current position on Workgroup computing. Microsoft recognizes that, especially among its largest and most sophisticated customers, users are moving from personal computing to interpersonal computing. Microsoft will support this in a variety of ways, but a major distinction is its intention to enable applications to recognize and support workgroup activities rather than to build separate, workgroup-specific products. Clearly, users are going to get a choice between the cross-platform, integrated, single application focus of a Lotus Notes and the scaleable single platform, integrated cross-application focus of Microsoft. Users win when they may choose between two formidable competitors with two excellent, well implemented products; the trick is understanding which is best for your particular situation. (It is worth noting that Lotus also offers the cross-application approach, albeit with Microsoft -- and other -- operating systems running underneath, as do other applications vendors.)

Microsoft comes to workgroup computing as the world's most incredibly successful desktop computing vendor. Therefore, you should not be surprised that their approach to providing workgroup computing stresses customer choice, support for diversity, and the ability to continue to use existing applications. After all, so many of those existing applications are theirs! Microsoft's workgroup computing strategy emphasizes:

• An evolutionary approach, built on top of existing architectural investments. (When you've become the IBM of the software industry, you start to sound like IBM, too.)

• An open architecture (they mean Windows) so that customers can choose the applications and development tools they need.

• The ability to use these tools to build customer-defined solutions to real world problems.

Microsoft provides a set of technologies and services to accomplish this, including: extending the Windows environment, evolving cross-platform desktop applications, delivering workgroup-specific applications such as electronic messaging and group scheduling; providing advanced, relational database technology; providing a broad range of sophisticated development tools; and investing in customer support to help customers both implement and support their workgroup solutions.

These include:

Operating Systems: Windows for Workgroups and Windows NT
The Windows Open Systems Architecture (WOSA)
The Windows Messaging API (MAPI)
Open Data Base Connectivity API's (ODBC)
Microsoft applications such as MS Mail, Access, Foxbase, and SQL Server.

Microsoft intends to be a provider of workgroup strategies for workgroups of every size and type. This will be a tall order, especially at the enterprise level, where Microsoft has little experience and the profile of a PC vendor -- but the broader vision and the new level of products like NT and the API's seem an appropriate start.

Comments or Questions: Send Email to opinions@wohl.com

Home/ Search / 2005 Articles / Issue Archive / Free Newsletter

Entire contents © 1993 by Amy D. Wohl. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden.