News Analysis:
Windows NT is the hottest and most important operating system in some time. Microsoft has recently said it's betting the farm on NT 5.0. But just how popular is NT?
In its fourth quarter computer industry forecast, the Data Analysis Group reports that approximately 6 million NT workstations are in use today. Of those, 1.5 million were sold in 1996, and 1.43 million were sold in 1997. Analysts predict that by the year 2000, NT Workstation sales will rise to more than 5 million units annually.
Who is making money selling workstations that run on NT? Industry surveys show that in the first quarter of 1997, HP led the charge, with 37 percent (227,000 units) of all workstations running NT Workstation sold. Compaq came in second, with 29 percent (178,000 units), followed by Digital Equipment, with 14 percent (86,000) and Intergraph with 13 percent (80,000). Miscellaneous vendors account for the remaining 7 percent of the market.
The figures clearly show that vendors who previously announced robust support for NT have been rewarded with sales and have helped drive the NT operating system into the workplace. Market forecasts for the near future suggest that these firms will undoubtedly continue to enjoy their successes.
Surveys show that NT continually outsells UNIX, and the trend won't slow any time soon. For instance, estimates for 1998 are that NT workstations will outsell UNIX workstations by a wide margin—1.4 million to 575,000. The forecasts for 1999 are similar: UNIX will sell 450,000 workstations and NT 1.6 million. Apparently, high-end and mission-critical shops that have been traditionally UNIX-based are now placing more faith in NT.
NT Server is also making headway, mainly at the expense of Novell. Surveys released in August 1997 show that of the shops implementing NT, 72 percent of the NT servers introduced replaced NetWare servers in NetWare environments; 31 percent replaced UNIX servers in UNIX-based companies; 23 percent replaced OS/2 servers in OS/2 environments; 13 percent replaced Macintosh servers in Macintosh environments; and 13 percent replaced AS/400s in AS/400 shops. NT is hugely popular and gaining momentum, and not just the UNIX crowd is taking notice.
—Mark Joseph Edwards
News Analysis:
Document Management Is in Your Future
Organizations are creating more electronic documents than ever before, and sharing them over the Internet and intranets. The need to manage this content has created a burgeoning and highly competitive document management market. Many vendors, including PC DOCS, Documentum, and FileNet, offer tools that help organizations manage their data.
Historically, document management has been a vertical operation rather than an infrastructure issue for the mass market. Traditional document management was appropriate for document-centric applications with sophisticated management and control requirements—it was a niche solution, not a mainstream one. For example, traditional, specialized document management applications were the new-drug approval process in pharmaceutical companies and legal-document management in law firms. Contrast this specialization with a mainstream tool such as word processing, which every user in an organization needs.
But organizations are changing. With the increase in the volume of electronic documents (e.g., word-processing documents, HTML pages, email messages) in most organizations, basic management of these documents in one repository is becoming a horizontal need for every desktop in an enterprise. Although the industry debates who will prevail in the document management market, one company has quietly been entering the arena: Microsoft. By simply entering the market, Microsoft will increase awareness and accelerate the growth of the market.
Microsoft's strategy has been to build standard document management functionality and infrastructure components into Windows NT and Microsoft Office applications. As Microsoft starts giving document management away as part of the infrastructure, traditional document management vendors can add value by building complementary solutions on this foundation.
Microsoft's strategy.Microsoft hasn't made a formal announcement that it's getting into the document management business. But if you doubt that Microsoft is heading in that direction, look at the features supporting document management that are already creeping into Microsoft's operating system and applications:
- NT Server supports long file names, which simplify searching and categorizing.
- You can assign file attributes (e.g., categories, key words, authors, office routing) to any file stored in NT and any file created in a Microsoft Office application and use the attributes to categorize documents.
- BackOffice will include Index Server for indexing and searching files including Office files, Exchange public folders, email, and HTML documents stored in NT file systems.
- Site Server provides Web site content management (e.g., personalized content delivery, usage analysis, link maintenance).
- Message queuing will let vendors build replication for document management.
- Transaction Server will provide integrity for transactions (e.g., an order entry system and a document management system) that are executed across applications.
- Distributed File System will let users see files on different servers in a unified, logical view.
- Active Directory will mean that any system (including document management) can readily use the OS's user IDs, logons, security, and other functions that require directory services.
Microsoft's consulting group has pieced together a system called Microsoft Document Library, which provides some basic document management features such as check-in, check-out, and version control. The system is built on top of Microsoft technologies, including Visual Source Safe, SQL Server, and Active Server Pages (ASP). Although Microsoft is not likely to offer Document Library soon as a shrink-wrapped solution, its availability shows that Microsoft is interested in the document management market.
Putting basic document management functionality into the operating system infrastructure makes sense. With billions of dollars' worth of Microsoft Office products out there generating files, you can expect the infrastructure to provide standard library services. And a BackOffice repository is the logical place to store profile information for documents created with Office tools. Don't be surprised if Microsoft eventually introduces a document management server as part of BackOffice.
Web content management.Adding basic document management functionality to manage files is all well and good, but Microsoft is looking at a much larger picture: Web content management. Microsoft is going after the corporate Web business with gusto, and it shows in Microsoft's products. For example, all Microsoft Office applications can quickly generate HTML. A growing percentage of content developed with Office tools winds up in an intranet or on the Internet.
Clearly, the Web content management market has huge potential. The growth in the number of HTML pages alone in corporate America is staggering, and the need to manage these documents is critical. In most organizations, documents are scattered and difficult to find, and the Web publishing process is cumbersome and time consuming. Document management is a critical technology for attacking the problem. Features such as version control and renditions are perfect for Web applications.
As an indication of the potential in this market, Microsoft already has Visual Source Safe, which provides some basic Web content management capabilities. Visual Source Safe stores Web documents in a separate repository; a better solution is to use the common document management repository to manage client/server content and Web content, and to make the content available to users via Microsoft groupware and Web servers (Exchange and IIS). Using a common repository and services will make managing Web content no different from managing other corporate documents.
With Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 and Windows 98, Microsoft is blurring the distinction between operating environment and browser. IE 4.0 makes your Web browser and file management interface the same tool. By providing document management functionality and a central repository as part of this infrastructure, document management will be seamless to the user. And if Web content management is part of the operating system infrastructure, Microsoft will be able to blend document management with the BackOffice products, too.
The Web is where the action is for Microsoft. If traditional document management is a $500 million market today, the Web content management market could be worth billions of dollars, because so many organizations are building interactive Web sites with plenty of content that needs managing. Microsoft is in a great position to go after this market. Microsoft products are used to create most of the content in organizations, and the distinction between client/server content and Web content is becoming nonexistent.
Levels of document management.Microsoft's entry into the document management market is sure to make waves. It will contribute to the recent segmentation of the market. Each segment will provide different levels of value for end-user organizations and different price points. Likewise, the potential size of each market is different. The three market segments are
- Basic document management and file management functions for the mass market: If you don't need much more than garden-variety file management, you'll probably get such library services for free as a commodity in your operating system or office suite. The size of this potential market is huge, and this market will be Microsoft's initial target.
- Robust document management systems for horizontal applications that need more than basic file management: Today, groupware-based document management systems occupy this market segment. Such systems are easy to use, relatively inexpensive, and relatively robust. The potential market size for this segment is smaller than the mass market, but larger than the traditional document management market. If this segment grows enough, Microsoft may enter the market, perhaps with a BackOffice product.
- Highly specialized document management systems for the vertical application space: Traditional document management systems, which offer sophisticated functionality and high value for specific vertical applications, will occupy the market space for vertical applications. These systems cost more than groupware-based document management systems and address the needs of a much smaller market segment than the other two segments.
Document management vendors can take heart from these developments. Microsoft is providing a solid foundation for document management, with many core services that these systems can leverage, and it is increasing awareness of the function. The successful vendors will take advantage of the market and provide solutions beyond those available in the infrastructure.
—Jeetu Patel and James K. Watson Jr.
Samsung's New 700MHz Chip
Samsung Electronics has developed a 700MHz Alpha processor, which might be the fastest chip ever created; the company will start production of the chip in summer 1998. Samsung based the processor on the 0.25-micron chip design. The thinner chip wafer reduces the distance that electrons have to travel (so that manufacturers can pack more circuitry into a smaller space) and increases the processor's speed significantly. Samsung says the new chip's 700MHz clock speed is a conservative estimate; in all likelihood, the chip will run much faster.
—Mark Joseph Edwards