InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
September 14, 1998
Setting De Facto Standards
By Jacques Surveyer
eing the second-largest software vendor and the leader in desktop operating systems, server
operating systems, and office suites has its advantages. One is the ability to set de facto
standards. If enough other software makers build interfaces to your product, it will become the
one all others are measured by.
Such is the case with Microsoft Repository. Going into its second version, the software has well over 60 licensees, including Business Objects, Compuware, Forte, Informatica, Micrografx, SAP, and SAS. Microsoft's Repository uses the Unified Modeling Language as a way to describe repository objects. Currently it supports four objects: database schema, data transformation packages, scheduling of transformation tasks, and OLAP dimensional schema. These objects fit nicely into the Microsoft Data Warehousing Framework.
Platinum Technology Inc. is concurrently working to deliver a Unix version of the Repository that will run first on Solaris and then on other popular Unix platforms. Microsoft has been relatively open and consultative about each of the individual objects to be stored in the repository, as in the case of Java. However, Microsoft considers what company is first when it decides what extensions and features will be incorporated in order to accommodate new objects, such as ActiveX and JavaBeans components, or OLAP and Web scripts.
Nonetheless IBM--whose previous SAA and ADCycle repository designs failed to gain industry support and effective implementation--must cringe to see 60-plus and growing licensees for Microsoft Repository. That number is a testament to the crying need for a open repository in the data warehousing space. That need is especially apparent because many of the same vendors who have paid to license Repository will have to compete against free Microsoft products in the P&DSS market.
The same scenario is playing itself out in the OLAP arena. OLE/DB for OLAP is a technically attractive API. So much so that 33 of the major OLAP vendors have agreed to support MS/SSOS's API. This is happening despite the fact that many also have pledged allegiance to the OLAP Council's MD-API and that the MS/SSOS HOLAP engine will compete for free against many of these same vendors' products.
At least end users will come out winners for a time, since prices will be lower and products that had not worked together well because of so many proprietary APIs will be more likely able to do so. For example, if they support the OLE/DB for OLAP provider or the consumer interface, vendors will be able to interconnect their products in the Windows NT space. This is an important distinction, because OLE/DB does not work in Unix where many OLAP vendors can point to scalability advantages. But Microsoft asserts that it is the company's "highest business priority" to migrate OLE/DB to Unix. The question remains, Will the OLAP market, already growing at 30%-plus, see a sufficient expansion to offset downward price pressures caused by free Microsoft OLAP software? Ah, the intrigues of computing standards setting--you are never certain whether the motives are altruistic, byzantine, Machiavellian, or just a case of dumb and dumber.
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