Who's Afraid Of Big Bad Bill? Everyone I Know
Carol Wilson
I was near the end of an interview with a highly confident executive
of a large and highly successful telecommunications equipment
manufacturing company that had recently scored major wins against
its traditional competitors.
"Who," I asked him, "do you fear most as a competitor?
What keeps you up at night?"
I expected him to deliberate. He didn't.
"Microsoft," he said.
This interview took place more than a year ago, before the Redmond,
Wash., software giant was making noise about moving its Windows
NT operating systems into the public network as a service platform,
back when the company was still battling the Justice Department
and still trying to whip Windows '95 in shape for its much-delayed
launch.
I was surprised at the response, but only because of the source.
Since that interview I have taken the opportunity to ask other
highly placed vendor execs if they view Microsoft as a major competitor.
Invariably, the answer is yes. When I ask how or why, the answers
are sometimes vague, but the concern is real and tangible.
What makes Microsoft so feared isn't just its control of the vast
PC operating system market or its seemingly endless array of software
products, ready to march into any lucrative market. It's Microsoft's
tactics that create concern.
In the world of computer-telephony integration, for example, Microsoft
wins support for its interface, the Telephony Applications Programming
Interface, the old fashioned way, by giving it away and asking
for exclusivity. Backers of the competing interface, known as
Telephony Services API, can hardly compete with "free."
The bar for proving their approach just went up a few hundred
feet.
Now come the browser wars. And as Internet service providers and
Bell companies that want to be ISPs are finding, Microsoft is
not hesitant to use its power here, either. The company is offering
to give the ISPs its new browser, the Internet Explorer 3.0, at
no charge, if they agree to use that product exclusively
in
other words, no Netscape. Those who balk at the exclusivity deal
can pay license fees for the Microsoft browser, and find themselves
left out of the company's Internet Referral Server, a dial-up
service that lets Windows '95 customers locate local ISPs.
For any company just getting into the ISP business, as the Bells
are, the idea of being left out of a directory that lives on thousands
of desktops is horrifying. But the alternative isn't much better.
The pattern that emerges here in Microsoft's behavior is not so
different from the marketing strategies put in place by long-distance
companies trying to win customers: Lure people onto your network
with a good deal but try to lock them in place as long as possible.
The difference here is that no long-distance company, not even
AT&T, can wield the market power that Microsoft holds in the
PC world.
So are all those telecom execs wise to keep glancing over their
shoulders, waiting for the unfriendly sight of a guy in glasses
and a perpetually bad haircut who might be gaining on them?
I'd sure think so. And in case anyone failed to notice, Microsoft
has just signed on as a customer and equipment provider in GTE's
latest trial of Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, or ADSL, technology.
That means that its software engineers are going to get an early
crack at seeing what can be done with high-speed data access over
telephone lines, and what's required to make its Windows NT servers
operate within a public ADSL network.
Sleep well, folks.
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INTER@CTIVE WEEK
August 20, 1996
