Computer desktop calendar

The past couple of years have seen weaknesses appear in the mighty Microsoft machine. At the server end, it has a struggle to establish .Net as a dominant platform, and on newer platforms such as mobile clients, it has made limited progress. But while questions might have been raised, for the first time in many years, over whether its continued leadership was inevitable, it has faced little real challenge in its heartland, the desktop PC and office environment.

Now that has changed, with Sun, IBM, Novell and Red Hat leading an assault on the bastion of Microsoft power, based on thin clients, web services and Linux. IDC predicts that Windows' desktop market share will fall from over 90% to 58% by 2007. Certainly, these companies are formidable opponents and there are signs that this time, Office may come under heavier fire than it did during the many attempts of the past decade to unseat it. Vendors, led by Sun and Oracle, have for almost 10 years preached the thin client message--using low cost, slimmed down or even mobile devices to access applications and data that are mainly held on the server. This would clearly weaken the Microsoft 'fat PC' model, eat into the high margins of its overloaded OS and applications, and shift the focus, and the investment, to the server and database.

Success was very limited though. Network connections were too slow, web services too immature, software too restrictive and most companies found it easier to stick with their large investment in Windows than to undergo a major technical and cultural shift. Now, many of those objections are wearing thin. Networking bandwidth is more plentiful and cheaper, web services are becoming de rigeur, thin client devices from tablets to phones are becoming usable by the enterprise, large organizations are taking Linux applications seriously at last, and with new versions of Windows looming, many companies know they will face a major upgrade at some point in the coming few years anyway. This makes 2004-7 a critical period for Microsoft, when it needs to hang on to its client base as, for the first time, those customers seriously weigh up the alternatives to the fat PC and the Office suite.

IBM'S CHALLENGE

Just days after Red Hat launched its first Linux desktop product last month, Microsoft faced its greatest challenge yet in its heartland, as IBM unveiled a suite of PC business applications targeted firmly at Office.

IBM Workplace, which is largely based on Lotus Notes technologies, contains email, collaboration, web portal, word processor, spreadsheet and presentation applications, as well as a small database and software for working on web software offline. Further bolstering the rejuvenated attack of the server/web-centric computing model on Microsoft's 'fat client' systems, Workplace is accessible through a web server via a browser on any client device from a PC to a mobile phone, running Windows, Linux, Unix, Macintosh and, in future, phone OSs such as Symbian.

IBM has developed centralized management software for the suite, and is also creating optional add-on applications such as content management.

Like the Java/Linux-based desktop suites front Sun, Red Hat and Novell, IBM is claiming that its software will significantly lower costs by centralizing software. Steve Mills, head of the software unit, said: "All of the cost (in desktop software) is labor, not software cost", and so the decision by IBM to offer server-based management applications is critical to the marketing strategy.

Workplace can be distributed and updated centrally but, unlike pure web applications, can also be used offline and then synchronized once the user reconnects. This facility is particularly targeted at mobile users with PDAs or smartphones--the mobile enterprise is an emerging market that IBM is targeting aggressively through its global services unit and through alliances with client vendors such as Nokia and PalmOne.

The actual software cost will be $2 per user per mouth for access to the base software, plus $1 per user per month for each IBM application such as messaging or document management. However, for non-IBM customers, there would be the high start-up cost of investing in IBM WebSphere web services and portal software, which is required to implement Workplace. Mills admitted that new WebSphere sales were the main revenue opportunity from launching the new desktop--and, presumably, the negative impact on Microsoft .Net of providing an Office-like front end capability.

A range of partners promised to support Workplace and to make their web-based applications accessible through its front end and its client management software. These supporters include Siebel, PeopleSoft and Adobe.

Microsoft responded with claims that Office System 2003 already offers server-based management. "It does show that IBM is seeing our point of view that it takes more than a server to make information workers productive," sniped Dan Leach, group product management for Office, to US reporters.

RED HAT'S LINUX APPROACH

Red Hat opened up a new front in its assault on Microsoft in May, announcing the first desktop version of its Linux distribution. In the past, the market leading Linux company has focused on Unix servers but has now gone for Microsoft's jugular with Red Hat Desktop, targeted squarely at Windows PCs.

Now it is attacking the PC using the approach beloved of Microsoft enemies for the past decade--promoting a 'thin client' model of enterprise computing. Initially, Red Hat says, it will aim its new product at companies whose employees need only basic client-side facilities, such as word processing, and so could use a low cost device running Linux, with most of the applications and data held on the server. This is the structure with which Sun and Oracle, and more recently the smartphone vendors, have tried to wean corporate buyers off the fat PC and on to a more servercentric policy that can, if implemented well, dramatically reduce desktop software and support costs.

However, over time the company says it it has "grand ambitions" to take a broader share of the desktop market, beyond its initial target sectors of enterprise, government and academia.

As with the server products, Red Hat will sell its desktop software as an annual subscription, including support and updates through the Red Hat Network. It will offer subscriptions in blocks of 50 users for $3,500 per block. Another $10,000 buys the Red Hat Network Satellite Server, for running central administration tasks and customizing the delivery of software updates--thus further strengthening the centrally controlled, thin client model. Also included is one copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the server. Linux had 2.6% of the desktop market while Windows had 93% a year ago, according to IDC.

Red Hat believes the desktop product will match the revenue from the server versions within five to seven years, although by this stage applications will be running on a far more tightly coupled platform of desktops and servers.

NOVELL'S ATTACK ON MICROSOFT

Novell has made a renewed push recently into an area where it has failed before, the Office territory, buying up Ximian, which brings the company a desktop environment that is already one of the most popular Linux application bundles and provides an alternative to Microsoft Office and to Sun's Java-based JDE. Novell has the resources to sell this into corporations in a way that smaller open source suppliers have not been able to. Ximian also brings with it two high profile open source projects that have been developing under the company's auspices--the Gnome Linux desktop and the Mono project, which allows Microsoft .Net apps to run on Linux or Unix. (This could create some conflicts of interest with SuSE, which has based developments on a rival to Gnome, KDE.)

Ximian has also developed Red Carpet, a utility for automatically updating different versions of Linux on PCs. Novell plans to combine this with its own Zen Works product line, which can send out software updates to Windows-based PCs, and to converge the Linux desktop with its own venerable Group Wise collaboration tools.

And Novell is reinforcing its new open source credentials by joining wider industry initiatives, notably the IBM-dominated Eclipse Foundation, which seeks to build an open Java tools framework.

Novell has also continued the Linux-ification of its product line in other areas, adding SuSe Linux support to the Ximian desktop so that its two acquisitions are in step with each other and can be offered together. The update also includes the Ximian Edition of OpenOffice.org 1.1 and the GAIM instant messenger client.