Microsoft registers www.NewStrategy.NET

2000-06-22

The IT industry is a strange one sometimes. On Thursday last week, Microsoft pulled the covers off its gleaming new strategy, an announcement that it has been building towards for many months. Products incorporating the fruits of this strategy will become available next year, which begs the question – what was the previous series of big strategy announcements all about?

Let’s work back from the answer. Last week Bill Gates announced .NET – an Internet-centric vision that sees Microsoft’s current product lines as being the building blocks for a seamless, global computing environment. As reported on The Register, we get Office.NET, Windows.NET and MSN.NET for starters (and you can work out the rest for yourselves). Products will be .NET-enabled by bolting on XML-based interfaces. The whole thing begs a few questions.

First off, there are issues of (if I may) a techno-architectural nature. It is one, relatively straightforward thing to draw a blueprint diagram of the “ideal” architecture for Web-enabled applications. There aren’t that many ways to skin that particular cat, at least not in theory. In practice however, things get a little more complicated for two reasons. Yes there is the issue of legacy – “this is not a green field site,” say the consultants, no doubt earning plenty of money in the process. There is also an issue of global complexity. Microsoft has drawn up a reasonably comprehensive framework of its own but it seems to be dependent on a couple of factors – that the whole world adopts it, and starts from scratch to do so. Either factor sounds just a trifle infeasible. Let me stick my neck out here: the way of the future will be one that supports the heterogeneous mass of complexity that already exists (and there is more on the way, what with Mobile and all). Single-company solutions, however elegant and widely adopted they may be, cannot succeed.

The second issue is one of strategy versus product. At the beginning of last year, Microsoft launched BizTalk, an XML-based framework to support business communications. XML is becoming a bit of an overachiever however – business-to-business traffic is not enough for the megalomaniac language, which (as SOAP, in partnership with Microsoft and now IBM and Sun – see the link?) is being touted to be the format for communication between application components as well. Trouble is, Microsoft may well be quick to see the exponential potential of XML, and are changing their strategy on a monthly basis to fit. However the products are forever trying to catch up with the vision. Not long ago, delays were announced to BizTalk Server to include support for business processes, another conquest of the XML strategy. BizTalk Server may be out after the summer but by then, may well be eclipsed as companies hold out for BizTalk.NET, unlikely to be available for at least six months.

There is one more question that must be asked – is the .NET strategy anti-competitive? Of course it jolly well is. What Microsoft has done is pulled together its own product lines as building blocks to act as a foundation for the future of the Web. The company is between a rock and a hard place: clearly, the future lies in the integration of today’s applications and operating systems, however Microsoft does not wish to concede that customers should have a choice of different platforms. Keen that its own portfolio should be used in preference to others, the picture the company paints is exclusively Microsoft. This is a flawed perspective, which will ultimately cause the Seattle giant more problems than it solves. It looks like the future holds plenty more opportunities for Microsoft to change its strategy.

(First published 22 June 2000)