Microsoft is in hot water. The company is in trouble with the Justice Department in this country, and it’s in trouble with the Japanese Fair Trade Commission abroad. At the same time, Microsoft is cutting the cables of support to Novell users by refusing to support Novell’s NT NetWare Directory Services (NDS) product. It is also postponing the shipment of Windows 98 until the middle of the year; taking potshots at a judicially appointed consultant; and mounting a campaign of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) among software developers. This is serious news for Client Access/400 experts! Though the consequences of these turbulent times won’t be felt directly for several months, management is watching and asking questions. How did Microsoft get into this mess? Does Bill Gates need a new technology strategy, a different marketing plan, or just a better public relations team? (It’s become obvious that he needs a better legal team.) If the only way to pull the Internet Explorer out of Windows 95 is to disable the entire desktop (as Microsoft contends) will Gates follow the court’s ruling and actually commit OS hari-kari? Is Microsoft really telling us that its package software is so badly designed that a simple browser can’t be without destroying the entire platform?

The reality that is causing to management at thousands of companies around the world to ask these questions is that we’re all hooked on Microsoft. Our AS/400 organizations are so dependent upon Microsoft’s desktop that our IT strategies hinge upon Bill Gates’ products. Meanwhile, all the other choices for client desktop software have dried up. The OS/2 desktop has gone the way of the carrier pigeon, the Mac platform is little more than a shadow of its once-promising image, and LINUX (that little devil child of the UNIX operating system) is looming as the only open alternative for our users. There’s a frightening thought. What’s a company to do? Go back to IBM DOS? At least in DOS you could add and remove programs without obtaining a papal dispensation.

I believe the Microsoft problem is not going to go away. In fact, it will probably get worse for the AS/400 client community before it gets better. Meanwhile, these management concerns are going to drive us to the network-centric, thin-client computing model—even if it’s not ready for prime time. Why? Because Microsoft’s public persona and legal problems

make people worry about Microsoft’s maturity. Maybe Microsoft believes it can jerk the chain of the legal system, but corporate customers don’t want their chains jerked. The bottom line is, “Who cares if Microsoft wins or loses its legal battles, just keep our systems running!” Management is only interested in preserving the investment in information systems and making those systems work. Consider this: The life cycle of a desktop client is only about a year and a half—18 months before it’s made obsolete by newer technology. The information system lives on a lot longer. How long will Microsoft continue to wrangle with the courts? Eighteen months? Will corporations stay with Microsoft if it is besieged with court orders to disassemble its client operating system? What happens if the courts tell Gates to unbundle the Internet Information Server (IIS) or some other integral part of NT Server? Will our management stand by and watch their long-term strategies get hung up? Perhaps this is one reason that the rate of new client implementations and upgrades stagnated in the final quarter of 1997; FUD strikes again.

IBM and Lotus have another plan, and V4R2 of OS/400 is the model. Instead of heavily bundling single-vendor proprietary software, IBM has implemented the Lotus Domino server, Java technology, and the Network Station as heterogeneous platforms for development. Instead of increasing the cost of hardware and software ownership for the server environment, IBM has consistently lowered the price/performance points across the board. Instead of cutting off support for competing products—such as NT and Novell—IBM has extended and enhanced support with the ability to run multiple PC operating systems on multiple Integrated PC Server (IPCS) cards within a single AS/400. Yes, our future clients will undoubtedly include Microsoft desktops, but they will also include Java workstations and Network Stations. In fact, V4R2 is perhaps the antidote to the FUD factor. It may be the safest place to be for some time to come—not a bad state of affairs for the architecture everyone was calling dead and obsolete just 18 months ago.

Of course, you may have a different view from your vantage point in the trenches. If so, let me hear it. To be a Client Access/400 expert these days it takes all kinds—all kinds of opinions, and all kinds of client desktops. That’s why we’re here at CAE.

Thomas M. Stockwell is an independent IT analyst and writer. He is the former Editor in Chief of MC Press Online and Midrange Computing magazine and has over 20 years of experience as a programmer, systems engineer, IT director, industry analyst, author, speaker, consultant, and editor.  

 

Tom works from his home in the Napa Valley in California. He can be reached at ITincendiary.com.