Fight is on for operating environments

Press, 12 August 1986, Page 24

Fight is on for operating environments

From the “Economist,” London j Operating environments do several jobs. They extend the capabilities of the operating system to allow users to switch more quickly between, say, a word processor and a spreadsheet They help the user master the complications of dealing with a collection of applications programs. They also make it easier for the producer of applications programs to shift programs from one type of computer to another type. Sales can prove sticky. Retail salesmen are handicapped because so few computer users know what an operating environment is — let alone why they should want one. Computer-makers are reluctant to “bundle” the package with hardware or software until it has proved popular. Digital Research took an early lead in the market for operating environments in 1984 when it signed a deal with Atari to distribute its GEM pro-

gram with Atari’s ST series of home computers. IBM launched its Topview around the same time as Digital Research’s GEM, but it had only modest success in getting the program accepted for its own computers, let alone others. Microsoft, meanwhile, was still getting the bugs outs of its Windows program — which was launched, more than a year late, at the end of 1985.

A three-cornered fight is developing for a fastgrowing bit of the com-puter-software market — operating environments that promise to make personal computers more powerful and easier to use. In the five years, 1986 to 1990, Dataquest, a market research firm, predicts that sales of these programs may grow by nearly 75 per cent a year — four times as fast as the software market as a whole. IBM is losing the competition for operating environment sales to two young firms, California’s Digital Research and

Washington State’s Microsoft Last into the market Microsoft looks like emerging the big winner.

The rewards of success in operating environments are twofold. First a market worth about $45 million in 1985 and forecast to grow to $7OO million in 1990. Second, the strategic value of the product Success in operating environments can help sell both applications software like word processors and the operating systems which keep applications software working smoothly with computer hardware.

A more sophisticated program than GEM, Windows works best on the second-generation of IBMcompatible computers using the 80286 chip. Although these machines are outnumbered roughly 10 to one by standard PCs, Windows is quickly proving a winner in the marketplace. Microsoft

wrote the DOS operating system for IBM and IBMcompatible computers. So it had the technical knowhow to integrate Windows tightly into the workings of the computer. It also had close business ties with software developers — for example, Ashton-Tate and Lotus Development — to convince them to adapt their programs to take advantage of Windows.

Microsoft’s marketeers also beavered to get com-puter-users to put Windows to work on highprofile jobs. Reuters is using the software to prettify its news bulletins. New York financial institutions are putting their on-line prices and statistics into Windows. Microsoft will get a further boost with the introduce tion later this year of chips specially designed to speed the display of text and graphics windows.