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Netscape outlines its vision for the future: NONE

Open Network Environment (ONE) <br>takes on Microsoft behind the firewall

By William Blundon, JavaWorld.com, 10/01/96

Page 2 of 3

In the IS world of decreasing staff and increasing backlog, is Netscape ONE's vision better than Microsoft's, or simply different?

ONE vs. Microsoft

The ONE environment includes a number of building blocks: Java, JavaScript, client plug-ins, server plug-ins, the Netscape foundation classes, and HTML, as well as the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP), SMTP, POP3, HTTP, and other protocols. These "open standards" differentiate Netscape from "platform-anchored" Microsoft (another great epithet). Let's assume that the quest for open standards leads to one of the benefits that IS departments really want. A key question remains: How open and standard is Netscape ONE?

At the risk of a small increase in the average IS manager's blood pressure, let us concede Java, HTML, SMTP, POP3, and HTTP as open standards. If Netscape ONE were built around these foundation technologies (and these alone), it would be difficult to call it anything other than an open standard.

However, the second set of technologies that make up Netscape ONE -- JavaScript, client plug-ins, server plug-ins, the Netscape foundation classes, and IIOP -- are closer to "operating systems extensions" than standards. In Netscape ONE, it is also very easy to extend HTML, and thus start down a very slippery slope that deviates from the norm.

What is an open standard anyway? There are two principal definitions: a technology specification adopted by an independent body and widely supported, and a technology that has an 80 percent share of its market.

By this latter definition, JavaScript may be a standard. Of course, so are OLE and Windows (at least on the Intel platform). HTTP is an open standard under the first definition of the term. However, now that Microsoft has announced its intention to license ownership of the ActiveX and DCOM specifications to an outside body, they are equally transformed into open standards. IIOP is a stretch under either definition. Yes, the Object Management Group (OMG) has specified a standard Object Request Broker, but it was designed for a different purpose, and the installed base of IIOPs is close to zero.

Let's remove the marketing facade. In practice, "open standard" means only one thing: non-Microsoft. While this definition may have currency in the software marketplace, it has little value in the corporate IS world. In the corporate world, Microsoft is the company everyone loves to hate. It is also the company that supplies much of everyone's software infrastructure.

To be of interest to the corporate world, an open standard must do three things:

• Be heterogeneous.
• Provide an upgrade path for much or all of existing Microsoft software.
• Provide a path that is demonstrably more cost-effective than Microsoft's.

In this world, Netscape ONE falls short on the last two of these three criteria.

Much of existing corporate software is either written for mainframes or written to conform to Windows APIs on the desktop. OLE, OCX, and ActiveX components are a sunk cost in many IS organizations, and any vision that does not provide a path for these building blocks is not standard. Similarly, while POP3 and SMTP are standards that must be supported, increasingly so is Exchange. To be not just open, but standard, Netscape ONE will need to embrace the de facto standards of the corporate world's Microsoft infrastructure.

 

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