NETWORK SYSTEMS NEXT TARGET FOR GATES' FIRM.Byline: Evan Ramstad Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. There are other things Microsoft Corp. is doing that are more glamorous than the project Rich Tong leads. There's that alliance with Hollywood's DreamWorks studio, the all-news cable channel with NBC NBC in full National Broadcasting Co. Major U.S. commercial broadcasting company. It was formed in 1926 by RCA Corp., General Electric Co. (GE), and Westinghouse and was the first U.S. company to operate a broadcast network. and high-profile Web publishing Creating a Web site and placing it on the Web server. A Web site is a collection of HTML pages with the home page typically named INDEX.HTML. Web sites are designed using Web authoring software which provides a graphical layout capability or by hand coding in HTML or both. projects with journalists Linda Ellerbee Linda Ellerbee (born Linda Jane Smith in Bryan, Texas, U.S., August 15, 1944) is a journalist who is most known for several jobs at NBC News, including Washington (DC) correspondent, and reporter and co-anchor of NBC News Overnight, and Michael Kinsley Michael Kinsley (born March 9, 1951 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American political journalist, commentator television host and liberal pundit. Primarily active in print media as both a writer and editor, he also became known to television audiences as a co-host on Crossfire . But none of them is as important to Microsoft as Tong's project. He leads a group of several hundred programmers developing a series of products that, marketed under the title Back Office, will run servers, the behind-the-scenes computers feeding networks of desktop or laptop machines. They are key to the company's effort to keep growing faster than the personal computer industry. It is becoming harder for Microsoft to grow that fast because it has hit the ceiling in two major product categories. Its Windows operating system operating system (OS) Software that controls the operation of a computer, directs the input and output of data, keeps track of files, and controls the processing of computer programs. is used on 90 percent of new personal computers and its Office suite of productivity programs holds about a 90 percent share of that market. Unless it pushed into something new, the company's overall growth would soon just match PC sales growth, which is slower this year than last. Microsoft's most obvious opportunity is in software that runs whole networks of PCs, not just individual ones. ``It's not as easy as it used to be to get above-market growth out of Windows or out of Office,'' said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's marketing chief. ``For a variety of reasons - A, we have lower share, B, the market is growing faster, and C, there's a lot more chance to differentiate - in the Back Office area it will be easier to grow at above-market rates if we do a good job.'' Back Office is five pieces of software, including a database program, Web publication tool and collaboration product similar to Lotus Notes. All are to be united by a new version of the Windows NT operating system, which is more advanced than the one found on most desktop computers. The programs are designed to run on a broader array of PCs than regular Windows, which is confined to machines powered by Intel Corp.'s chips or their clones. Back Office also works with systems based on Digital Equipment Corp.'s Alpha chip or the PowerPC chip of IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) , Apple and Motorola. Market studies show purchases of personal computers for use as servers will grow 20 percent to 25 percent this year. |
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