For those of us old enough to remember the pre-Windows era, the arrival of 3 technologies marked a turning point in history. One that was not immediately recognized by some of the biggest technology and software companies until it was to late. And I think we are witnessing a repeat of that event.

Some History

I began programming computers professionally in 1979. I worked at Travelers Insurance company in Hartford Connecticut programming an number of different IBM mainframes in COBOL and Assembler. In 1981 I began writing code for the Zilog Z80 running CP/M and later the 6502 chip made famous by the Commodore Vic and later the 64 and 128 models.

Sometime after that I began writing assembler code for early Intel processors including the 4004, 8008 and finally the 8086 and all of it's descendants. These programs were all character based, typically with a monochrome screen with 80 columns and 25 rows.

I made a fair amount of money writing what were called TSR's for the IBM/Microsoft DOS platforms. A TSR was a Terminate and Stay Resident program, it was designed to run, install itself, hook a keyboard interrupt, and then go to sleep. It could be awakened by pressing the key combination associated with it. Sort of an early attempt at multitasking.

In 1990 Microsoft released Windows 3.0. I had played with Windows 1.0 in 1983 a little, and Windows 2.03 later, and was unimpressed. I saw potential but the hardware of the day just did not allow for an affordable system that was capable of running these earlier versions. But 3.0 and later 3.1 and 3.11 were stunning! I took one look and never looked back. I knew this was the future of PC's and corporate computing.

At the time WordPerfect was the dominant Word Processing application and Lotus 1-2-3 was the dominant Spreadsheet application in the DOS world. And Novel was the dominant Network OS for PC's. And they (and most of the rest of us) assumed they would continue in those roles.

What they did not realize was that Windows heralded a true paradigm shift in the world of the PC. I know that phrase is over used, but it really fits. Both Lotus and WordPerfect were slow to offer versions of their applications for Windows, and when they finally did, they were terrible products that did not work well, lacked features their DOS versions had, and just did not "fit" in the Windows environment.

Microsoft had already had a lot of experience writing applications for a graphical environment, courtesy of their work for Apple. Word, and especially Excel, were great applications for their time, and took full advantage of the Windows environment, and WYSIWYG formatting and editing. Not surprising perhaps considering they also created the OS.

Novel, on the other hand did not seem to take the threat of Windows seriously. Yet NT was on the horizon and Windows for Workgroups was already making huge inroads into the lower end of the networking market.

In a few short years WordPerfect all but disappeared, Lotus lost it's dominant position in its market and eventually was subsumed into the original "Borg" of the software industry, IBM. Novel limped along longer, but it too is a shadow of its former glory.

All of them missed the proverbial boat when Microsoft brought it's triple whammy to the market, Operating System, Applications, and it's own Network Operating System. All more or less integrated, all capable of working well together and all "good enough" for most users and small to midsize business.

Flash Forward

Are we watching another watershed moment in computing history now? I think so, but I am not sure what to call it. It's not a new concept, but technology and infrastructure have caught up and now the model is actually workable. It's leading representatives are Google Office and Microsoft Live Office. Neither are quit there yet, but it sure looks like they are heading in the right direction.

Network bandwidth is increasingly available at ever cheaper rates. The concept has several names, but they all describe a similar set of concepts. Zero or low touch install of applications, a browser based experience but with a much richer more desktop type user experience. Usage licensing, (Software as a Service?) as opposed to shrink wrap licensing.

There are still some huge barriers to adoption, security, trust, access and reliability, etc. But these issues are slowly getting worked out. I still prefer a locally installed desktop application over the available web based alternatives, but the feature and experience gap is steadily narrowing. The economic model has yet to prove itself either, but concepts such as Micro Payments, services such as PayPal and others are all aiding that effort as well.

So what do you think? Who will be the casualties of this shift? Who will be the winners? How far are we from a truly major change in how and where we we get the applications we use in our daily lives?

Think about it!

Cheers,

Robert Porter