The arrival of the Internet looks set to disturb the delicate balance of competition in the client/server tools industry, as Lem Bingley from Online Reporter, a sister publication, reports.
The last time anyone felt like counting, there were 148 different tools claiming to support client/server development. Bloor Research, the software industry watcher which did the arithmetic, reckons that’s about 125 too many. Quite why there should be room for so many players in the market is a matter for debate, but the arrival of the Internet may well precipitate the shake-out that analysts like Bloor have long predicted, and that tools purchasers would dearly like to see. In recent months, every one of the tools vendors has articulated some sort of Internet or intranet-focused strategy. Some have felt compelled to take immediate action – cobbling together Web extensions to add to their existing development environments. Other vendors have dug deeper and are re-architecting their offerings with the Internet in mind. Others still – principally those wit hout a large user-base to worry about – are building completely new Internet-centric tools from scratch.
Two camps
The Internet has divided the client/server industry into two camps. While all agree that the Internet is hugely significant, enthusiasm for the new environment tends to vary in inverse proportion to the pre-Internet fortunes of the vendor. So tools companies that have struggled to show healthy growth and make money in recent years – and that means most – are hoping that the Internet will prove enough of a mould breaker to overturn the existing order. Naturally, these suppliers tend to paint the Internet as a revolutionary change which renders past preferences obsolete. By contrast, today’s market leaders – Powersoft, Forte, Oracle, Microsoft and others – are more reserved. They describe the Internet impact in less apocalyptic terms, main taining that the change can be accommodated without a loss of serenity – or profitability.
Lifeboat
Centura Software Corp is one company that fits firmly into the first camp. In its previous incarnation as Gupta Corp, its SQLWindows lost out to Powersoft Corp’s fierce marketing of PowerBuilder. It is now basing its strategy on two planks – the move to the use of component software that has been inspired by the widespread adoption of object-oriented software techniques, and, needless to say, the Internet. The company describes the shift to Internet computing in epochal terms: The Internet is a major paradigm shift in the way organizations implement business solutions and provide access to information, states Centura in a recent white paper Bridging the Internet and Client/Server. It adds that the shift is on the magnitude of the introduction of the personal computer. Centura’s Internet-as-lifeboat stance manifests itself further when it comes to Java. Our eventual aim is to replace the existing Centura run-time with a wholly Java solution, enthuses Dhunji Bilimoria, Centura’ s product manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa. This is despite the fact that Java is still a relatively untried technology for large-scale applications, and that such a move would result in many of what Bilimoria admits are non-trivial prob lems. Forte, a company in the other category – and one that Centura is chasing – has its own Internet strategy, of course, but it is much more understated. The company has already released a Web Software Development Kit, which is scheduled to gain Java capability before the end of the year, but otherwise, Forte is distinctly reserved in its assessment of all things Internet. It describes the arrival of the Web as a logical progression from client/server architectures, rather than a sweeping change, and has made little alteration to its underlying sales pitch. Forte is sold on the basis of application partitioning, says Rich Scheffer, vice president of marketing at the company. That means breaking the application into pieces, with a middle tier between the client and the database to enforce the business policies so that the client doesn’t have to deal with these issues. The Internet has simply taken this idea one stage further. It has made the client even less important.
Server challenge
Scheffer acknowledges that much of the excitement surrounding the Internet is a direct result of developments on the client side, but argues that the challenge for business developers is not the Web browser itself, but how to plug browsers into existing business applications. And that, he argues, is a server challenge. As these remarks highlight, the vendors with a server-side, or at least a distributed application focus, have had an easier time modifying their strategies to embrace the Internet. Browsers are thin clients (although they are getting fatter, particularly with the addition of Java) and client-focused vendors have needed to be much more creative in imagining how their tools might fit into a server-centric Internet-dominated world.
