Mike Murray, responsible for the marketing and development of network operating systems at Microsoft Corp, has said that the company must aim to incorporate a service such as Banyan System’s StreetTalk into LAN Manager. Speaking at the KPMG Forum for Business conference, Murray outlined Microsoft’s networking vision for the 1990s – information at your fingertips – and he admitted afterwards that anyone in a large organisation trying to find information would have a hard time using the LAN Manager. Murray described Banyan’s system as excellent. The system maintains a global distributed database that details the name, location and attributes of every item on the network, including users. It enables users to access other users or information without thinking about topologies or protocols – a connection to a remote host, for example, is made by selecting the host’s StreetTalk name from the menu. According to Murray, this type of service is essential to networking systems that want to achieve the aim of providing information at your fingertips. Others include a client-server architecture, open systems and unsurprisingly from Microsoft, a graphical user interface. Unlike Rob Baid at Banyan, who believes that corporate-wide networking will entail the death of the mainframe – at least as far as information sharing is concerned, (CI No 1,540) – Murray says that personal computers need to be connected to mainframes as well as to each other, as it would be imprudent to ask users to discount an information infrastructure that has taken years and years to build up. He advocates a mix of the two, client-server computing is one way of distributing information across an organisation, connecting people at the desktop is another way. The two vital components of Microsoft’s networking strategy are LAN Manager on the server and access to the network via Windows 3.0. Last month Microsoft integrated Automated Design System’s Windows Workstation into LAN Manager 2.0 to enhance integration between its operating system and Windows 3.0. It hopes to penetrate Novell’s share of the global market, reducing it by between 10% and 20% over the next four years. Windows 3.0 is useful tool for achieving this. Other elements that will give Microsoft an edge are in the areas of installation and management, which according to Murray take hours and hours with NetWare. But despite gunning for Novell’s market share, Murray says that direct comparisons between the two are invalid, the focus between ourselves and Novell is slightly different, we are in the mainstream of computing and Novell has a server orientation. And he added, Novell has no database operating system and their software is seen as proprietary, it is not supported by a range of hardware vendors and has not been licensed by other companies like LAN Manger has. Despite the proud licensing record, which includes all the big names, two months ago Microsoft began its Network Specialist Programme – the setting up of a network of trained resellers in an attempt to boost LAN Manager sales. Murray says its too early to say how the scheme has actually affected sales, but he reckons the direct competition will have a huge impact and says 500 large organisations are evaluating LAN Manager as a result of the programme.
