.
NTexplorer (NTe): Do you believe the long awaited Windows
2000 will live up to people’s expectations – should we believe the hype?
Martin Butler: The reality is that you don’t know until they deliver it and
people start using it. However, if you speak to people like Unisys or Compaq who are
basically betting their businesses on Windows 2000 (W2K), their experience with the
product is causing them to be quite optimistic. I don’t think that Unisys would bet
its business on it if it thought in any way that it was not going to meet its requirements
because Unisys is pitching at the top end of the market (the medium to large scale
implementations of W2K). I was recently with Unisys and their experience is that they will
be able to scale W2K and deliver the kind of mission critical applications that people are
talking about. The other side of this of course, is that Microsoft has delayed the product
a number of times. A lot of people see this as a negative sign, but I see it as a positive
one because Microsoft appreciates more that anybody that if they screw this one, they are
in trouble. Microsoft will lose the opportunity to occupy the enterprise ground with an
operating system. The majority of vendors we talk to are all saying the same thing: we are
happy for Microsoft to take its time; we want them to get it right and we don’t want
them to rush it. So, in terms of the preparation, then you would have to say W2K is
probably the most prepared and tested product that Microsoft has ever launched. They know
what it’s got to do; it would be hard to imagine that they are going to miss the
target.
NTe: Do you think that the release date (October) is optimistic?
Martin Butler: No, it has to be then – there’s so much riding on it.
Microsoft isn’t in this on its own any more, they have so many major partners like
Unisys, NCR and Compaq and they are all expecting a boom in their businesses as soon as
W2K hits the marketplace. As well as the vendors, the corporate marketplace is also
waiting: We have just completed a survey of almost 5,800 IT-using organisations in the UK
marketplace and discovered that not many corporates adopted Windows 98 as they didn’t
think it worthwhile. However, there is a huge expectation that as soon as W2K is available
that they will adopt it in a whole-scale manner. Many corporates will not go directly to
Microsoft, they will go through people like Dell and Compaq to implement it, so I would
say that Microsoft has to deliver something by the end of the year as people like Compaq
won’t wait. There must be a huge pressure on Microsoft at the moment.
From a business perspective, there’s a real sea change in the attitude of many IT
managers, in fact it’s almost like a polarisation has taken place in the market
place. It can be tipified as Windows or Linux. The change in attitude is that the pressure
to deliver solutions and applications is so great that a lot of IT managers don’t
have time to think about the technology any more. IT managers don’t want to think
about whether they want an AS/400, Unix or Windows. They just want to go out and buy a
commodity box, a commodity operating system, or a commodity network and plug it in and go
with it. This has caused a fundamental change in attitude and from our research we
estimate that within a year, two years from now, three out of four large organisations
will be using NT as their standard midrange platform. (Figures taken
from Spectrum survey and a straw poll done about six months ago during a conference tour -
around 400 to 500 IT managers from around Europe were canvassed).
The intent to standardise on NT is widespread and business driven. In the States, 70% of
solutions purchases are made by business people, the IT department isn’t doing the
bulk of buying, in Europe it’s about 34% but that figure is growing. The business
community is more frequently buying the solutions that they need to run their
business; they don’t care about the operating system at all. If SAP is available on
NT as a standard product they go and buy it, they don’t care really whether it’s
NT or not. It’s getting to the stage now where many large companies just go and buy a
package and they assume that it’s going to run on Windows. In Europe we’re going
to see the same ramp-up of business manager based buying and the IT dept is relegated to
caretaker of the infrastructure. This is happening to IT departments in a lot of
organisations.
NTe: Where do you think the anti-Microsoft lobby will go?
Martin Butler: They’ll go to Linux. The interesting thing about Linux is that it
represents a rallying call to all the techies who can’t stand the thought of
operating systems being easy to implement and use and are trying to defend their
territory. You can’t ignore that: I was recently told the story about Bjarne
Stroustrup, the creator of C++ who said that he created it as C was getting to easy, and
as a result, his friends’ contracts began to drop at an alarming rate. So, you get
these ridiculous things like C++ materialising because of the self-interest of the
technical community. Linux is a manifestation of that – it is horrendously
complicated.
NTe: Do you think Linux has a long-term future?
Martin Butler: Well, in a way I hope it has because the one thing we can’t have
is Microsoft totally dominating the roost. The rest of the industry does need a rallying
point and it looks as though Linux will be it. Various companies such as HP, IBM and Intel
have all shown some interest in it - it’s a point where they can join their forces
together against the evil empire. Potentially, there is quite a constructive dynamic that
can emerge out of this. If Linux is at least a possible alternative it keeps Microsoft on
its toes and as long as Microsoft is the dominant player it keeps the Linux community from
fragmenting, so you would get a single operating system instead of a fragmented one. Same
as with COM and CORBA: while CORBA is on the go, Microsoft can’t totally dominate the
roost with COM and while COM is in the go, the CORBA people have to behave themselves to
some extent. That sort of dynamic is quite unique within the industry so I hope that Linux
is seen as an alternative, just not a widely used one.
NTe: Where does IBM fit in amongst all this?
Martin Butler: IBM is changing its strategy pretty dramatically at the moment. In
terms of implementation, the company doesn’t care what operating system they use, IBM
knows that the money is in services. If you look at any typical project, you spend less
than 2% or 3% on the operating system, and about 60% on services (consultancy, getting
contract people in etc.) and that’s where the money is. Only around 20% is spent on
hardware. IBM seems to be pitching more and more towards the services territory. There is
a dramatic move going on within IBM. It has realised that the money in the future will be
based on knowledge-based services. In the same way that Unisys stopped making PCs, you can
expect IBM to do the same thing in the future – they’re not interested in
low margin activities. IBM knows where the market is going and the margin
isn’t in tin, it isn’t even in software anymore. IBM knows the value is in
knowledge and information. Personally, I am very impressed by what IBM is doing at the
moment. I think they’ve got it right.
NTe: The Gartner Group has recently suggested that Windows NT/2000 will not be secure
enough for Internet commerce applications until the end of 2001. Do you agree?
Martin Butler: No, I think that the whole think will happen a lot more quickly than
that. Exchange server for example will be launched with a PKI infrastructure technology in
it, and there’s talk of that being embedded in to W2K at some point and I believe
that it will be launched as a secure environment next year. NASDAQ, for example, is using
Windows for a large-scale implementation where security is very important. So, I think
that the security issue smacks of alarmism. It’s not actually a huge matter to embed
a PKI-type technology into Windows. There’s a whole burgeoning set of security
products coming on to the market like ID2, Entrust and JCP. At this moment in time the
products are slightly esoteric, but the fact that ID2 will be launched in the near future
as an embedded part of exchange server to make it a completely secure messaging
environment – suggests that security will happen rather more quickly than people
expect.
NTe: Many people are accepting W2K as the way forward and others are treading very
carefully – what’s the best approach?
Martin Butler: It’s a simple analysis of risk versus reward. If W2K offers you
advantages that you can’t get any other way and it’s core to your organisation,
then take the risk. If you don’t have to take the risk then you can hang around for a
year. I think the big impetus for embracing W2K will be speed of implementation and
integration issues – most packages are written for NT these days: they can be
implemented, they can be plugged into the network and that will be quite a driving force
for organisations to use NT. Windows 2000 is a sea change. Many people may see it as
another release of Windows that may take us to a higher domain in terms of what actually
can be done with it. In fact, it’s actually more than that – it’s arriving
at a time when most organisations want a commodity approach to the OS and the hardware
that they use. They are too busy trying to implement solutions for their businesses.
NTe: Will W2K facilitate and encourage e-commerce?
Martin Butler: Yes, absolutely. Right now, around 8% of organisations are doing
e-commerce but rate of take-up is huge. By the end of the year it will be 20%. Within a
three years time span it will go from 1 in 12 doing it to almost everyone. I’ve never
known any other kind of application take hold to that degree. The use of Windows NT/2000
will be facilitated by the services that people will be implementing in the future, such
as things like online procurement, online bill presenting and payment. These kinds of
services are not things that you’ll build, you won’t have time, you’ll buy
a package and most are based on NT. It’s a positive feedback loop that Microsoft has
created and they are very good at it. The industry is, by default, saying that all these
new applications will be available first on Windows.
NTe: Have you ever said anything that has got you into trouble, or said something that
was completely misunderstood?
Martin Butler: Yes, when I was working with Robin Bloor, we discovered that many of
the SQL databases had a very simple mechanism for losing database updates and nobody had
spotted this. We published a press release to this affect and you wouldn’t believe
the flack we received from not only database vendors but from the users of the technology.
We received a number of calls complaining that we had made them look stupid and some heavy
treatment from vendors saying we had undermined their product. I learnt a lesson from that
– if somebody wants to know something, they will ask you and typically they will pay
you – don’t proffer what is very valuable insight to a marketplace that
doesn’t necessarily want it. The stuff that we learn these days we either keep to
ourselves and people can ask us to go along and tell them about things or we keep quiet
about it. It is not our role to be the IT town crier, we are not an exposé mechanism.
NTe: Do you see the Butler Group staying focussed on IT?
Martin Butler: We are changing. Many conferences I have done recently have been
focussed towards a certain business issue. We are very interested in the new skills that
businesses are going to have to learn in the new commercial environment. We’re not
really talking about just technology; one of the things that I’m particularly
interested in is games theory and information theory. You now have a scenario where people
are publishing information online which is available to their customers and their
competitors. I’ve spoken to a number of people recently who are questioning whether
they should be publishing this kind of information to their competitors. So, there is a
whole new raft of information strategies and the way you game with information and
we’re moving in to those sorts of areas. We’re also moving in to verticals,
because the manufacturers and the finance industry have particular kinds of problems,
particularly in e-commerce and they want particular answers and so we’re becoming
more business focussed.
As a whole the analysts are intermediaries. There is a lot of consolidation going on in
the analyst community right now. The analyst community is going to be far bigger and more
powerful than probably most of the vendors would like and we are taking their information
flow.
Martin Butler was interviewed by Fiona Newbery and Andy O’Brien |
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