Microsoft: What Do You Want To Do About It?

By William Darron

A few weeks ago I got one of those registration notices from the Internic. If you have ever registered a domain before, you know what I mean. They check with you before they send you a bill to make sure that the contact names are right. I don't like being the Administrative contact on domain names because this makes me the legal owner. I would rather be the Technical contact. I forwarded the message from the Internic to the IS director of the company that owned the domain. I jokingly added, "What do you want to do about it?"
He wrote back, "Isn't that Microsoft's new slogan?"

I thought it was a funny reply, but it really is very telling about the attitude most professionals in the computer industry have towards Microsoft. I guess it is because Microsoft seems to have all the answers and no one has a better one.

What is the Problem?

PC's have a potential to radically change the way businesses operate and businesses do not know how to deal with this technological leap. To date the vast majority of businesses have done little other than use computers as glorified typewriters or adding machines.   As people who are "computer literate" start to gain power within these companies, there is a chance for technological innovation to radically change the job descriptions of the presently employed.

For years business has laid out "ground rules" by which people can advance within its ranks. Each business creates its own hierarchy, where people work within the structure to "advance". Traditional roles are carved out for each group of participants, and with time each person grows into the position above them. Levels of bureaucracy cause a natural distancing between the highest levels of a company and the lowest ranks. A constant chess game occurs between participants on the lower levels, vying for a limited number of seats at the top.

PC's threaten to wreck this whole structure. E-mail can bypass traditional "gatekeepers". Computer networks and databases provide information to people faster than ever imagined by the people who began the current traditional model of business. People who grew up in this older corporate culture are slow to change to accommodate the changes in technology. Is it any wonder that the ability of computers to solve problems has far outpaced the ability of most companies to implement the technology?

As technology's pace quickens, the stage is set for a confrontation between older managers unwilling to change or learn and younger managers who want to rapidly accept new technology.  The front line of this battle is not the IS department. It is with the poor staff of secretaries, accountants and assistants actually using programs that make their day to day life a bit easier. How many companies actually make tools used by this group of people? Only a handful. At this moment Microsoft is leading the pack. Of course this leads any other player in the game to cry foul and look for any method to stop the bully.

Why is Microsoft in the lead? Mainly because they understand the "big picture" and they listen to customers' requests.  Then they modify software to meet those requests. They set out with the goal of putting a PC on every desk, and Microsoft software on every PC. They understand what can be done if all of these machines are interconnected with applications that have certain core functions which stay the same between several applications.

If you used a PC prior to Windows 3.x you may remember that each program had it's own definition for control and function keys.  For example the standard F1=Help key on WordPerfect 5.x for DOS was SETUP!  Imagine the frustration if you were a first time user sitting down to a PC running WordPerfect 5.x.  This is what the opening screen of WordPerfect 5.x looked like.  What button would you press first?

Don't get me wrong.  I would never want to go back to this. But some software company needs to develop more applications using the same philosophy as Microsoft.   Unfortunately these same companies see the Justice Department is a "great equalizer" to gain a competitive edge.

Those who do not remember the past....

Does anyone remember the software company called Ashton Tate?  They developed the ever popular program called Dbase.  Dbase was the PC database standard for many years.  Their release dBase III is probably still the engine of many a corporate legacy system.  Ashton Tate came out with dBase IV in the late 1980's.  At the same time a company called Fox released a new front end program that used the dBase format tables.  FoxPro was a very good program and people started to use it over the new dBase IV.  dBase IV had the regular version 1.0 bugs.  Ashton Tate was also the manufacturer of MultiMate, the leading DOS based word processor.  Their version 4.0 was not being accepted either as WordPerfect 5.0 had just been released and people were using it over MultiMate. So what did Ashton Tate do?  It threw its money into a lawsuit against Fox!  With no money to fix the bugs in dBase IV and no money to regain the word processor market with a revised version of MultiMate, the company fell on hard times.  They were bought by Borland International in the early 1990's.

I could also relate the legal battle of Borland's Quattro Pro and Lotus's 123, but you can look that one up on your own.  The bottom line is that if companies insist on spending money on lawyers instead of spending money on new products, Microsoft will be the only one standing.

It's like Las Vegas.  The odds are actually in the players' favor, but the problem is that without an unlimited amount of cash, the house will win.  Know anyone who is a bigger house than Microsoft?

Go to War against Microsoft

The solution is for other companies in the software industry to adopt Microsoft's methods. Sitting on the sidelines and crying does not make the loosing team become the winning team. Companies in the software business need to create user friendly programs that work the way people do and then market them the way Microsoft does.

Some people compare business to war. Compare the Microsoft business technique to the German style of warfare in World War II.

Following World War I, France believed that the best way to prevent future conflict against the Germans was to create enormous stationary fortifications along its eastern front. The Maginot Line made up some of the largest fortifications ever seen. German Field Marshall Albert Kesselring adopted unconventional military strategy using mobile mechanized warfare thus inventing Blitzkrieg or "Lightning War". This strategy completely upended all traditional thinking concerning warfare. Allied forces were not equipped to handle this kind of tactic. Kesselring and his troops circumvented the Maginot Line and chased Allied forces all the way to Dunkirk where they were evacuated.

In the end, the American Field Generals Omar Bradley, George Patton and British Field Marshall Montgomery studied the German tactics and used their own tactics against them. In the end the Allies were victorious, but not without the loss of thousands of lives and the virtual destruction of Europe.

Why were the Allies victorious? Only because they adopted the technology of the Germans. Time was needed for American and British industry to re-tool and create the equipment needed for the change in tactics. Had the French sat in the Maginot Line or had the Americans continued to operate with tactics devised before their tangle with the Germans in the Kasserine Pass in North Africa, we would probably live in a very different world.

What is the Solution?

Companies that compete with Microsoft need to adopt Microsoft's technique of making user-friendly software. Software companies need to adopt any strategy used by Microsoft and use it against them.

We know that Unix has been around many years more than Windows NT has and is more stable.

Quick!

What is the name of ONE Unix based word-processing program that a company can run on? How about a spreadsheet program? How about a database (front end interface.) The answer is that there isn't any.

So the Answer is to Boycott Microsoft?

On the American frontier the Native Americans were pitted against hostile Europeans that wanted to destroy their way of life and enslave their people. The Native Americans were originally armed with spears and arrows. The Europeans were using guns. At first flintlocks and later repeating arms made by Colt and Winchester.

So in this situation would you tell the Indians to boycott Colt and Winchester?

Business is war. Technology wins wars. If you want to do something about Microsoft, use their strategy against them. Create software that is better. Use a different OS so Microsoft can not borrow or "absorb" the features. In the end the winners will be all of use computer users. We will get a better product because the users of the world will adopt the better technology.