InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
September 20, 1999
Transition To The Web
Microsoft fleshes out plans to become provider of Web services and systems
As part of Windows DNA (Distributed Internet Architecture) 2000, Microsoft is building native support for the Extensible Markup Language, an emerging standard for sharing information among Internet-linked servers, into its key enterprise software products and developer tools.
Microsoft is also working on technologies for managing server farms that host business applications or operate dot-com companies. AppCenter Server, a new product due in mid-2000, will let companies manage Windows 2000 server clusters from a central management console, and will offer performance monitoring and component load balancing.
Microsoft president Steve Ballmer says companies are beginning to view software development as a means to provide Web services, placing less focus on static business applications. Microsoft wants to ensure a place for its own technologies as its customers begin to use object-oriented programming languages to develop online shopping sites, business-to-business commerce apps, and hosted software services on the Web. "The ways in which we will revolutionize our industries, and revolutionize the way people live and work, is broader than this notion of a computer on every desk and in every home," says Ballmer. "We need to extend the programming model of today for this new world."
By natively supporting XML, Microsoft's Component Object Model messaging services will be able to better communicate, in an asynchronous mode, with Java and Corba objects used to develop Web applications, Microsoft says. Microsoft hopes the move will prompt developers to keep writing Web applications in the Windows environment instead of Unix or Linux, which already communicate asynchronously with those object technologies. "This opens up Micro- soft's architecture to play pretty seamlessly with the Internet world," says Beth Gold-Bernstein, a senior analyst at Hurwitz Group. "It gives millions of Visual Basic programmers the ability to capture functionality written by other programmers, using their COM skill sets." That's a valuable asset to customers in a market where programming talent is scarce, she says.
Microsoft says building XML support into its enterprise software will let developers spend less time integrating the vendor's products with legacy systems and more time focusing on building business applications. For example, Host Integration Server, an upgrade to Microsoft's SNA Server due in mid-2000, includes an XML transaction integrator that lets COM apps call mainframe protocols. BizTalk Server, a new platform for exchanging XML documents among businesses, will enter beta testing this fall.
XML For E-Business
Meanwhile, Microsoft customers say centralized management is critical for managing their growing farms of Web servers. Some companies, for example, are creating both a primary server group to support their Web sites, plus a back-up group.
Onsale Inc., a $208 million online computer products retailer in Menlo Park, Calif., expects to complete its acquisition of rival Egghead.com in November, but plans to retain both server sites and manage them through a central location. "Over the next several years, you'll see most of us go to a two-site strategy," says Onsale chief technology officer Alan Fisher. "On some days, we've got a couple of million dollars in sales going through this site. We don't want to risk a single point of failure."
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icrosoft last week fleshed out Windows DNA 2000, a set of products and technology strategies designed to help the company make the transition away from its roots as a vendor of operating systems and proprietary software to a provider of Web computing systems and services.
Microsoft customers are already embracing XML as a key to E-business strategies. Search-engine Web site Ask Jeeves Inc. plans to complete an XML publishing system later this year that will automatically format content supplied from business partners with the look and feel of Ask Jeeves' Web site, says co-founder and chief technology officer David Warthen. Ask Jeeves was built using Microsoft's Web-site development technology, Active Server Pages, and COM, and runs on Windows NT servers. "It's been a good scalability story as we grow," says Warthen. 
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