Introduction
Catching Up On the Server Side
Fat and Rich—Furthering the Lead
The Microsoft Mobility Mission
Forms, Clients, and Developer Kudos
End-User Productivity Really Does Matter
James Governor
September 24, 2002
Microsoft finally has real competition in the developer tools market from vendors such as BEA, IBM, and Oracle. Yet it maintains a significant advantage based on both its rich client capabilities and the ease with which developers can take advantage of these capabilities using Visual Studio .NET.
Building a vibrant community around a powerful set of developer tools, then using that community to drive sales of related middleware is a crucial page from the Microsoft playbook. Visual Basic, for example, was a critical factor driving the acceptance of Windows and its subsequent dominance. More developers mean more applications and more applications means more reason to buy the runtimes. In the end, the company with the most developers wins. Emerging competition in the developer tools arena from Microsoft's middleware competitors, then, should mark a significant change in the middleware market as a whole.
Yet Windows client programs retain significant quality advantages. This has been long seen in complex desktop and workstation applications, for which "fat" clients remain the only real alternative. But the advantage is just as pertinent for many mobile applications, such as sales-force automation, where 100% pure Java—and even more so, "Web based" foundations—can be a liability as much as an advantage. Despite the emergence and growing sophistication of thin-client applications, when it comes to a rich, intuitive, and largely self-contained end-user experience, there really is no alternative.
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