Editor's note: Mark Smith is the founder of Windows NT Magazine and served as the editorial director of Windows NT Magazine and Windows 2000 Magazine from 1995 through 2000.
In August 1994, my colleague Tim Daniels and I were working as systems administrators for a small publishing company called Duke Communications International in Loveland, Colorado. We were discussing our frustration with Novell NetWare, which at the time had 70 percent of the file and print market share. Tim suggested we try Windows NT, a new Microsoft Server OS that had no market share. I asked him to pick up a magazine on Windows NT from the local bookstore. He returned and said, "There are three magazines for IBM OS/2, but nothing for Windows NT. Why don't we start an NT magazine?"
Tim and I were IT guys, not publishers. Yet we worked for a company that published one magazine called NEWS 3X/400, which was focused on the AS/400 market. And we knew what we liked to read: lots of how-to articles, product reviews, and practical tips from practitioners. So, we built a business plan and decided to pitch to Microsoft the idea of launching Windows NT Magazine.
After several months, we finally got our first meeting at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond. The pitch was simple. We wanted to launch an enterprise magazine, like NEWS 3X/400 for the NT market. Microsoft said "yes" immediately. Then we asked for access to their registered users and advertisers. Again, yes. Then we asked for the right to the name "Windows NT Magazine." Again, yes. So, we left Microsoft's office with access to the name, registered users, and commitment for advertising. Was our pitch really that good? Probably not, but our timing was perfect. Microsoft needed a vehicle for marketing the brand-new server OS, and our publication stood to meet that need.
At the time of our visit, Microsoft was telling the world that it was running its company, with 16,000 employees, on Windows NT. In reality, Microsoft was running its back office on 14 IBM AS/400s. In fact, one week before our meeting, Jim Allchin, then VP of Microsoft's Business System Group, had given his team a challenge: Unless they could make NT into a platform that ran the kind of line-of-business applications that the AS/400 did, they (and the platform) would fail. So here we walk in, a week after Allchin tendered his challenge, with our pitch to do an AS/400-type magazine for the Windows NT audience.
In addition, we had inside help from Solveig Whittle, the marketing director for Microsoft's Business Systems Group. Solveig believed that working with an independent publisher—in person, in print, and online—was the key to success in building a new IT enthusiast audience around Windows NT. Microsoft had zero market share in the enterprise. Windows NT Magazine promised to be an independent voice for early adopters of enterprise NT. We needed each other.
Early Adopters
Tim Daniels and I did our first trade show at Tech Ed in Atlanta in April 1995. We bought a bunch of "We Helped Launch Windows NT Magazine" T-shirts with a mockup of our magazine cover printed on the back. We stapled them onto the back of our booth with a sign that read, "Win a Free T-Shirt." Our booth was mobbed. More than 3,000 IT administrators filled out a survey for a chance to win a shirt. People were wearing our shirts all over downtown Atlanta. A month later, we sent those people a subscription card and got an 85 percent response.
The first issue landed on readers' desks on August 24, 2005. We intentionally timed it with the official launch of Windows 95. The early adopters of NT knew that NT was the future and would eventually replace Windows 95 (it did). We were all part of a club of believers. After six months, we had we had 50,000 subscribers. And the momentum was just beginning. Even the president of Banyan, which at that time had about 10 percent of the file and print server market share, after announcing that Banyan would no longer release new versions of the Banyan Vines network OS recommended every Banyan Admin migrate to Windows NT. Windows NT was fast becoming a juggernaut in the enterprise server market.