How Netscape has enhanced its intranet strategy and formed a response to Microsoft's position in the corporate computing world
The 1980s saw a dramatic shift in the way global business strategies were formulated and discussed. Peter Drucker went out the door along with strategic planning departments and five-year operational plans. In came books on competition, reengineering, and entrepreneurs. Indeed, rumors abounded that the required reading list at the Harvard Business School would ultimately be condensed to three authors: Sun Tsu, Michael Hammer, and Tom Peters.
As the 1990s come to a close, strategists in many Internet software companies seem to have focused all their leisure-time reading on one book — The Godfather. While many people in the software industry believe that Bill Gates wrote the book under a pseudonym, Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola cashed the biggest royalty checks. At least until recently. It is rapidly becoming apparent that somewhere in Silicon Valley a Netscape executive must be circulating an abridged version of the novel that summarizes the key concepts and provides selected aphorisms.
The most recent extensions to Netscape’s Open Network Environment (ONE) are greatly illuminated by a careful reading of two of these aphorisms:
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer
- Always make money for your partners
Netscape TWO
An earlier column “(Netscape outlines its product strategy: NONE” JavaWorld, October 1996) discussed several implications of the initial announcement of Netscape ONE, the company’s overall intranet strategy. That column and research bulletins from many industry analysts criticized that architecture for ignoring the realities of the existing corporate development environment, which is usually Windows-centric and frequently Microsoft-centric. In its first incarnation, Netscape ONE ignored a set of de facto standards that exist in most corporations (OLE, COM, OCX, and ActiveX, for example) as well as the economy’s reliance on popular Microsoft applications software.
The impact of The Godfather is evident in Netscape’s response to these criticisms. In an attempt to keep its enemies closer, Netscape announced a comprehensive strategy to adopt and integrate selected Microsoft technologies into its clients, servers, and overall product architecture. The company announced a sweeping set of changes that should dramatically accelerate the adoption of Netscape products in even the most ardent Microsoft shops.
The new strategy is comprehensive enough to be considered Netscape TWO, a much more complete and sensible vision than its predecessor. The most relevant portions of this strategy include:
Support for major Microsoft APIs such as ActiveX, OLE, COM, and DCOM on Windows 95 computers
Tight integration with Microsoft Office (both 95 and 97)
Support for SQL Server and SMS
- Enhanced support for Windows NT services
Many observers were surprised by the degree of backward compatibility for Microsoft standards in the new and improved ONE, but it is a recognition by Netscape that the intranet is not a zero sum game, and that in most companies Microsoft is the incumbent.
Many analysts speculated that the adoption of Microsoft standards was very difficult for Netscape, given its public disdain for many of such standards in the past. That may or not be so, but what is clear is that Netscape is being very intelligent about doing whatever it must to win inside the firewall. Business is business, and in business winning is more important than ego.
Netscape AppFoundry
Always make money for your partners. That’s good advice in any business. When your partners can also make money for you it’s an even better objective, and that’s what Netscape has done with another series of related initiatives.
In addition to its own technology, Netscape has greatly extended ONE by providing instant access to a set of best-of-class development tools and applications for Java. This expanding set of intranet software (Netscape AppFoundry) is an attempt to stimulate the rapid deployment of applications based on ONE and to help corporations develop Java-based applications that are portable across operating system environments and computer architectures. AppFoundry provides Netscape with a set of powerful cross-platform software that will improve its chances of winning the competition with “platform-anchored” Microsoft.
Netscape also has provided an online community for IS professionals on the Web (AppFoundry Online) where developers can collaborate with other developers, software vendors, and consultants from companies such as Andersen Consulting, BBN Planet, and KPMG. The AppFoundry online community includes source code, trial versions of software tools, and technical resources for developers building Netscape-based solutions. AppFoundry applications are available at no charge or as trial versions. Some set of these applications will be bundled with a Netscape Enterprise Server CD.
With AppFoundry, Netscape does several things. It leverages its own development efforts by providing a comprehensive suite of Java development products that it could not afford to develop itself. By doing so, it also competes more successfully against Microsoft standards (especially ActiveX and DCOM) and the large community of Microsoft Visual Language developers whose existing tools, component libraries and vertical applications are being enhanced for the Internet/intranet. Microsoft has been recruiting these vendors for years as part of its ongoing attempt to evolve to distributed enterprise-wide applications, and these alliances have given Microsoft a major competitive advantage against Netscape.
With AppFoundry Netscape has made a major step in providing a one stop shopping environment for corporate developers, regardless of their existing computing environment. All on one site, developers can find the tools, applications, source, and consulting they need to build and deploy intranet applications. All the more reason to invest in ONE.
Even more importantly, Netscape has provided an exceptional promotional and distribution facility for their partners. Large numbers of vendors are vying for visibility on AppFoundry because it know it will help drive revenue. Netscape is making money for its partners, and in doing so it has learned how to win in the intranet. Corporations want solutions, not technology. Innovation is only relevant to companies when it leads to applications that can be deployed. AppFoundry is a major advance in this area for both Netscape and Java.
Conclusion
Corporations have standardized on Microsoft because its products were ubiquitous, its technology adequate, and because there was a large after market for compatible products, applications and developers. With its enhancements to ONE and the AppFoundry, Netscape is taking this approach with the intranet. If the company delivers as promised, many corporations will find it an offer they can’t refuse.
