Is The Web The New Operating System Platform?

11/07/01

In the last few days several events have reinforced our ongoing speculation that operating systems are becoming much less important.  Before you start laughing – and suggesting that I see my doctor for a check-up, let’s examine a few facts.

1. In years gone by, shared applications ran on servers.  The server ran a robust and hopefully reliable and fully featured operating system.  Customers selected operating systems initially based on their hardware choices (remember when each hardware vendor had his own proprietary OS?).  Later, customers selected hardware based on their operating system of choice and operating systems were frequently selected – at least in part – by the variety of software they attracted.
   
   

2. Today, shared applications often run on application servers, accessed via the Internet.  No one cares what operating system the application server is running as long as it is appropriate for the type of application (and the number of users to be supported) and as long as it supports the “right” applications.  Of course, most application developers have long adapted to this architecture and happily support the only application server operating systems anyone is likely to encounter – Windows NT, popular varieties of Unix (especially Sun’s Solaris), and Linux.

Furthermore, with the advent of Web Services (admittedly, still in its infancy), operating systems may be even less important.  Existing applications, especially those that have been heavily customized or entirely custom-developed, in the past, will stay wherever they are on whatever operating system they happen to use.  New applications and new development is likely to occur using both old development tools, designed to leverage existing skills, and new development tools, designed to be easier to use and faster.  Integration will occur through XML and other layers of abstraction.  Just as operating systems could provide a layer of abstraction above the hardware, the new Web Services environment will provide new ways to connect above the operating system level.

What Does That Mean?

Of course, if what operating system you chose in the past becomes less constraining, you may make future choices more freely.  This is exactly what IBM (and others) who are offering Linux-based choices, open source code, and free or less expensive software, are hoping to use to lure away customers habituated to the alluring critical mass of Windows code. 

If anything can be accessed from anywhere – and isn’t that the point of the web – why would previous operating system choices matter?  Customers can simply make new choices based on whatever they NOW like best, optimizing for scalability, performance, price, total cost of ownership, reliability . . . the list goes on.

There is nothing, of course, to keep the nimble Microsoft from itself being a competitor to succeed itself as the market moves from operating system-based models and constraints to web-based platforms.  Microsoft offers its own web service model, .NET.

The subject of Web Services, in its entirety, is too large to take on in a single issue of a newsletter.  Our rule is that nothing can be more than four or five pages long and we already have hundreds of pages of articles, notes, and ideas about Web Services.  Shortly, we’ll put many of them into a White Paper, which you can acquire if you like.  We’ll link its Executive Summary to the newsletter before the end of the month.

In the meantime, contemplate what IBM has done with its Websphere Studio development software (which you can see demoed at http://www-4.ibm.com/software/ad/adstudio/).  IBM views the development process as increasingly collaborative, requiring not just the integration of legacy and new software, but work by many partners using various products and methods.  Their new offering is designed to support such collaboration and move toward a future in which Web Services-style applications development is supported by open and collaborative efforts.  To reinforce and further its intentions, it has offered the ECLIPSE announcement, offering much of its technology as the basis of an open standard under a Common Public License.  You can learn more about ECLIPSE and the CPL process at www.eclipse.org. 

Just prior to the IBM announcement, Sun waded once again into its favorite conversation – pointing out that Sun is the only developer with an “open” environment.  From Sun’s point of view Microsoft is closed (although, of course, they represent an enormous de facto standard and often partner with Sun, IBM, and others in the open standards community, supporting standards like XML, SOAP, and UDDI).  IBM seemed to escape Sun’s comment as “not a developer” – we have no idea as to how Sun’s definition of developers is derived.  Of course, while Sun likes to portray itself as a standard bearer for Open Standards we can’t resist pointing out that they sell Solaris (a Sun-specific version of UNIX) and have never turned Java over to a recognized standards body.  Standards are one of those religious issues where everyone wants to be saintly but everyone has their own place to draw the pragmatic line.

HP also had an announcement this week (actually several announcements, but we’ll stick to their Web Services announcements, called Netaction, here).  Netaction is a set of 13 products, designed to permit HP customers to develop applications using a Web Services model and including an Application Server, application level Process Management, a transactioning product that can connect long, complex and disparate applications, a mobile portal solution, and an OpenCall SDK for developing voice services.

By now, all of the announcement should start to sound familiar and similar, as the market moves to become competitive around a new set of rules.

The next step will be for dozens, then hundreds, of tools and application partners to step up to the plate, declaring themselves to be in partnership with one or more of the first-tier players.  Some have declared themselves already; others will do so shortly.  In some sense, everything will change and software will get easier to write.  In another sense, nothing will change – most of the vendors you’ve done business with in the past have every intention of being here to do business with you in the future.

In any case, the era in which operating system choices determined everything may be drawing to a close.

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