Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
antly, with LANs being increasingly replaced by wide area networks, which unified large
corporate environments. By the early 1990s, Novell's NetWare operating system, updated
to add key features for distributed enterprises, led this market with a nearly 70 % share. In
1996, recognizing that the Internet was beginning to revolutionize the traditional network
market, interim CEO John Young initiated a program to make the company's products In-
ternet ready." (In fact, NetWare provided limited support for TCP/IP, the backbone of the
Internet, as early as 1992, although it would not incorporate native TCP/IP support for cli-
ent and print services until NetWare 5.0, released 1998.)
Other firms were also preparing for the Internet. On May 26, 1995, Bill Gates issued
a now-famous memo to all Microsoft executive staff members entitled "The Internet Tidal
Wave." In this document, Gates laid out what he saw on the horizon, and his thinking on
how Microsoft should prepare for the next great revolution in the digital realm.
"Our vision for the last 20 years can be summarized in a succinct way," Gates wrote.
"We saw that exponential improvements in computer capabilities would make great soft-
ware quite valuable. Our response was to build an organization to deliver the best software
products. In the next 20 years the improvement in computer power will be outpaced by
the exponential improvements in communications networks. The combination of these ele-
ments will have a fundamental impact on work, learning and play. Great software products
will be crucial to delivering the benefits of these advances. Both the variety and volume of
the software will increase."
Gates continued: "Most users of communications have not yet seen the price of com-
munications come down significantly. Cable and phone networks are still depreciating net-
works built with old technology. Universal service monopolies and other government in-
volvement around the world have kept communications costs high. Private networks and
the Internet which are built using state of the art equipment have been the primary benefi-
ciaries of the improved communications technology. The PC is just now starting to create
additional demand that will drive a new wave of investment. A combination of expanded
access to the Internet, ISDN, new broadband networks justified by video based applica-
tions and interconnections between each of these will bring low cost communication to
most businesses and homes within the next decade. The Internet is at the forefront of all of
this and developments on the Internet over the next several years will set the course of our
industry for a long time to come. Perhaps you have already seen memos from me or others
here about the importance of the Internet. I have gone through several stages of increasing
my views of its importance. Now I assign the Internet the highest level of importance. In
this memo I want to make clear that our focus on the Internet is crucial to every part of our
business. The Internet is the most important single development to come along since the
IBM PC was introduced in 1981. It is even more important than the arrival of the graph-
ical user interface (GUI). The PC analogy is apt for many reasons. The PC wasn't perfect.
Aspects of the PC were arbitrary or even poor. However a phenomena grew up around the
