| About InfoWorld : Advertise : Subscribe : Contact Us : Awards : Events : Store |
 |
||||
|
||||
 | ||||
 |
|
|||
 | ||||
|
|
|
||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 NEWSMicrosoft clouds API waters By Carolyn April and Ed Scannell August 8, 2002 3:31 pm PT DESPITE PUBLIC STATEMENTS of goodwill, Microsoft's attempt to unbundle its middleware products from Windows has received a resounding gong from developers and IT executives who accuse the company of continuing to stifle competition.
In addition, the Redmond, Wash.-based company is set to begin a licensing program for its internal communication protocols, allowing third parties to create server software that is interoperable with or can communicate with Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP, and future operating systems. The harsh feedback comes at a critical time for Microsoft which continues to suffer significant enterprise backlash over its Software Assurance licensing scheme. Yankee Group reported last week that 38 percent of 1,500 IT managers surveyed worldwide are contemplating the switch to alternative operating systems, such as Linux, MacOS X, Novell eDirectory or iPlanet or Apache Web servers. "[But] it may not be economically feasible for them to rip out and replace Microsoft," said Laura DiDio, senior analyst at the Yankee Group in Boston. While few analysts believe the licensing backlash will significantly impact Microsoft in the short term, combined with the API furor it has the potential to harm the company's quest to bolster its sagging credibility in the enterprise. "Obviously, Microsoft is doing this to show that they are open, but it's mostly a PR move," said Shawn Willett, principal analyst at Sterling, Va.-based Current Analysis. Industry observers note that simply turning over APIs does not necessarily make a developer's job any easier. With thousands of APIs in Windows, many of which have overlapping functions, developers are often left to guess which one they should choose for their particular function. "The problem for a developer is if you pick an API that seems to do the right thing, it may in fact be one that is either out of synch with everyone else or essentially been abandoned. Microsoft is very promiscuous in spitting out APIs," explained Jeff Tarter, editor of The Soft Letter, an industry newsletter in Watertown, Ma. "[The API's] are definitely not any help to us at all, I mean this is useless to us," said Jon v. Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software, an Oslo, Norway-based company that makes a competing browser product. "This may help make it easier for companies that want to use [Microsoft's] software, but of course, that helps Microsoft." The best remedy is for Microsoft to offer a version of Windows without Internet Explorer at a lower price, Tetzchner said. "Microsoft says they will let you hide Explorer, but that won't change anything. Users will still have to pay for it in Windows, and even if they hide it, the code still takes up disk space," he said. "You have to wonder what some of Microsoft's own internal product groups are thinking in terms of the competitive advantage they might lose in terms of features if they in fact release everything to developers," said John Dunkle, president of Workgroup Strategic, a consultant in Portsmouth, N.H. While only a handful of viable competitors are left who are anxious to get their hands on the newly released APIs -- such as AOL for browsers and messaging, and Real Networks with its media player -- there are many more in the networking world whose products need to be tightly integrated in order to work well across platforms. "Microsoft's [ middleware] touches not just what you and I might see but things like security and password management. Some networking vendors might wonder 'how do I get a password through from a Microsoft client here to a Microsoft net-based server over there, and can I use these APIs and undocumented calls to get into other systems,'" Dunkle said. A Microsoft official questioned the negative reaction to the company's plan to release APIs. "It's unclear why anyone would be anything but happy with the disclosure of additional interfaces," said Jim Cullinan, lead product manager for the Windows group in Redmond, Wash. Cullinan noted that the APIs themselves have not released yet and wondered why there would be dissatisfaction prior to disclosure of the actual APIs themselves. "Microsoft has put thousands of APIs out for developers to build on and now we're adding some," related to middleware, giving developers additional support, he said. Questioned about intent by some IT managers to consider switching to other vendors' platforms, Cullinan said Microsoft "is always concerned about the competitive landscape out there and we're constantly looking at trying to showcase the business value of having Windows in [a customer's] environment." "Whether people are unhappy or not is certainly important to us," said Cullinan. "We are constantly working to do better." Microsoft, he said, has no plans to offer a less expensive version of Windows without middleware like Internet Explorer. "Internet Explorer is not separate, it's never been separate. We've provided a mechanism as part of the consent decree to remove access to Internet Explorer but there's API's related to IE that are part of the Windows platform," Cullinan said. IE APIs pertain to functions such as browsing and the OS requires these, he said. Carolyn April is an InfoWorld editor at large. Ed Scannell is an InfoWorld editor at large. Paul Krill contributed to this report. SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
SPONSORED LINKS
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
