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PC Week Special Report Feburary 28, 1994

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PC Week Special Report Feburary 28, 1994 gaged in a struggle to re-engineer ,BY Dan Farber their info_nnation systeins. Terms like downsiring, ·upsizing, rightsiz­ en ~ears ago this v,;; e,k._:0}>~ ;" nahsts labored _long mto. the . ing, and scalable have become part of every managei 's .vocabul~ry: . ~ighttopr~ducethepremier issue of PC Week. •; One point is clear. The, expone~­ lThe front-i;>age·bahner headline tial growth 'in -power and perfor­ announced new graphics capabili-· mance of PCs has created an envi­ ties for IBM's.327_0 PC: Apple's Mo- 6 ronment npe forclient/servercom­ torola 68000-based Lisa workstation ', puting. Mainframes are sharing pro- was expected to give it stiff compe,­ . cessingdutieswithlow-costPCs,and tition. Compaq hadjust completed· rapid application-development tools its first year d .business with•$1 _1 0 that provide seamless .data access million in s·ales, Pr~sident ·Reaga:n ~~e 1:i~gin~ing -~o ,proliferllte. Lega; ! .'' ' • ' :i i.:.; ..\: ,:~ • ·'' ' • was .entenng his fourthyear-in the cy operating systems such as CICS, White House, and'Lo~~ iriint­ . ' MVS,andVMSarefindingtheirway, ingmoneywith its 1-2~3 spre~~heet . · onto modern RISC platforms, and Fast-forward-· to 1994. Sam Whit- · .,. new enterprise operati~g systems . from Microsoft and IBM are start- In 1984, about30 ing to emerge. Spreadsheets, word percent or our. rocessors, and databas­ -'the standard ap- . catiol!-s that readers had LANs~ fined . com­ puting-are Today,"100 percent _becoming pow­ erful, multimedia . are connected. tools for collabora- more,John Dodge, Matt Kramer, . tion. E-mail is .now and Beth Freedman-original PC · the hub application Week staff members-are still toil­ for, global corporations. ing at their trade. The crew of20 has ~d mobile co~puting has. grown to more than 100 writers, ed­ . ev,olved, froip the .15-pound itors, proiiuct-review analysts, de- portables !0yearsagotohand- . ,.· signers, and artists. Spencer F. Katt has , held' devices ,with wireless con: barely aged, andremainsourchieth . nectioris"and maihl~me ;ccess:· ' . ·/ 'It is also ·ci~a'r that·ihe ~on~-, telligence officer (see ,Page 77) . ' , ' -f PC Week readers are stilltrying to mental changes that occurred.over connect to mainframes, butnotp · the last decade.will be·dwarfed by changes in the years ahead. It is our marilyforterminal. .• · · · connectivity is no, Job at PC Week to reflect. those tralizing fo~ · chang~s in our weekly co~erage,'and puting sit ,, . to highlight the pro?uds, tre'nds;­ percent.of Sti:ategies, and companies that will ',' ·,. ii LANsatthei . enable_you to"ri:ake: criti~al te~h- cent of our' r •nology choices, ,.,_ F'·' , and they are 'we look fo;,;.;:nfto serving' you ; for another decade. 1 · :.- , ' PC WEEK SPECIAL REPORT• FEBRUARY 28, 1994 By John Dodge , . In 1985, IBM had expansion slots, enough n termtof important events, the came down wjth a , memory ( lM byte standard; ex­ · ,last 10 years ani,lil be evenly split , nasty co.Id, which,., pandable to BM bytes.) to run betweenlBM arid);Jicrosoft Corp .. • by 1987,had wors- <''. th,e Mac GUI half de~erit!y, · IBM r:ulidihe first five; Microsoft . , eried into the flu. anda hard disk built in. We took over in.the.last five. Appl£' ' When, in-1992, it reported a $5 bil- could h'ave arioi,ntedjan'. 'Computerl11c., Compaq Computer lion fiscal loss, the patient entered · 24, 1984-the day The Ma:c ICorp:; LotusDevewpment Corp., Intel the ICU with .a new team of doc- was introduced~as the Corp., arulNovellinc.' allenjuyed t}0r tors. Let's look back at the origins most important Mac moments in the sun, but-the time line •ofIBM's poor health. , . date. But the ori~al IS notched ~s/ly f7J IBM arul Microsoft Blinded by 1984's record profits, Macintosh was over- milestones. · I~M brass over the next two years . priced and underpow-· Recurri7!g themes were the progms­ rightfully believed c~tomers want- ered, much like its · si!lely fast.er pace oftechnow{fj, con- , ed to tie their·disparate systems ugly predecessor, stantly droppingprices, arul the eru1 of together, but wrot!gly coI;1cluded the Lisa. IBM mainfrarr,,e tyran?IY· .Seven-figur~ · that tJle only important computers The SE and · computers 'have-{argely gone away, re, brandished the Big Blue placard. Mac II made the ,P,/aced f7J small~;' fheaper,faster:RISG · , IBM not only-ignored, but flaunt- Mac viable in in- arul X8f>.bdsedPCs, 'workstations, arul ed ifs disdain for open standards, formation-sysq!m:s \~ ' servers,' aUrou_tinely networked. ,, · such,as the PC AT architecture it in: .. , c:lepartments ai;id it began. Here are /{ie'/iey-events, trends, arul tro\iuced iii.Au gust 1984. The com- .making appe.:µ-ances in corporate peopk_ofthepast IOye~rs. · · pany's arrogance was symbolized by America. The IS drive culminated the Micro_Channef architectµre, ,. • in 1992, when PowerBooks Who knows what the biJs technologyfor the new six- achieved a 20 percent share of the Don Estridg~ member PS/ 2 family rolled out on· portables market. Many executives would have April 2, 1987. OS/ 2wasunwrapped . gave up'their X86 notebooks for ., accompJished or , that same fateful day. Micro Chan- ·_ the jazzy PowerBooks . ----- where he would nel architecture was billed as a ,Apple's IS drive has since · have ended i:i'.p, had he not tragic­ "four-lane highway" <;:ompared to fizzled, but with PowerPC Macs ally died with his wife in'an August the PC AT's two.lanes. arrjving ne:<t month, 1994 should 198_5 jetline{ crash?Withl)ut a · . Reviledfor strbng:arming users . prove to be a crucial year in Ap- ' ' doubt, 'it wouldn't have been wi'th ( ' . 'int<;> buying a new standard that ob, pie's rolkr-co~ter existence. , . • 1 ~ ·~.ry IBM " . ;,· . ' .· soleted AT add-in.cards, IBM never · B~d th; Bjg_B)ue hierar~hy a . ·~- won wide support (gr the.¥icro . ,Novell may Jack clue to the directio9 of computing Channel. T~e following Septem- , the sturm urui in 1985,Estfidgi:wouldn'thave ber, it acknowledged defeat by drangof a Mi- been shunted from IBM's red-hot launching the PS/ 2 Mqdel 30-286, crosoft/ IBM feud, PC unit to an irrelevant manufac­ an ISA-based PC (what the.AT stan- but NetWare, with turingjob. He ·wo4ld have helped dard became once IBM relin- 20 million,users, is the · to mold whatIBMshouldhave be­ quished it). ISA ancfits superset, undisputed stan- ccime-atleast, that's what we'd EISA, are still going strong, <lard networking ' like to think would have happened. OS/ 2 also got off to a roc½y start.- operating system . As·a 22-year IBM veteran, . Standard Edition 1.0 ship~c! in · The proprietary Estridge that March quietly accept­ December 1987 amid a spike in S-Net hardware server ed hi& new position and was'not . RAM prices and a'.subsequent. arrived in 1983, be- heard from_agaii:i until.he m,et his .' shortage. Ruinors that IBM would coming Advanced Net- untimely end._J\lmostalfof his. col-. corner the ',\7orld's,RAM supply and· Ware'l.0i_n 198S.:,..:the ., leagi,ies from the g_lory day~,ht: the ,·· · give it to rteedyOS/ 2 pistomers lle~orlfoperating sys- E.ntry Systems,Division are now turned out to be.untrue. Even:ifit tern file server was born. gone from IBM', ' 9ad, there werevirtually no appli- Aavanced NetWare 2.0, ,. Estridge 's accomplishments cations for OS/ 2, and its touted came the following ye.u-, within IBM's smothering atmos­ GUI, the Prese'ritation Manager, growing in pow,;r a»d pliere ofthi: early '80swere noth­ was nowhere il) sight. popularity with nothing ing short of remarkable. He Inl987,IBM'sVietnamwasa initsway._ · · ramrodded the-PC. throµgh IBM's , OJ?-e-page state!llent announcing With Net- notoriously slow and rigid manage­ SAA (SystemsApplicationArchitec-- . Ware 3.0 ment'committee,.delivering it on ture):Although never surewhy_it . (a.k.a.-Net- . tirpeAugi l2, l'9SL Not content to .. was doing,SAA, IBM poured a ton of: Ware 386, de­ rest with that, he then built a-$5 bil­ res<iurces into it. SAA has since been livered•in. lion,bµsiness tha~, by the time he ·' abandoned and replaced.by individ- . August ' was "promoted," accounted for ,o ' ual stf\ltegies.. _. , , ''.. .":, · . · .1989) and percent ofIBM!s sales. The rest is . SAA and.Micro.Channel constl' · '• NetWate hjstol:y. _· , : , . tuted two egregious strategic. er- . 4.0 (d¢liv- What colle;igues remember most rors. Thejuryjs still out on OS/ 2. ered in about hin1 was h,is energy.and un­ ~ In April 1993, an outsider, Louis April flagging OIJtimism. in the f!1ce of set­ Gerstner,·took the helm from the · 1993), -- backsi Dan Wilke, who worked for (alleh)olin Akers. In terms of em- Novell · him, summed up D0n Estridge as ployment,IBMis;nowhalfthesize . has follows in a 1989 interview in it was,wh~n it caught the.co!d, , PC/Computing magazine: "With , Don, ifyoU: tripped or fell, you In early March didn't worry about somebody 1,987,Apple shootingyoi; in_the kneecaps. He'd Computer in­ tell you to ·get up,,b,ush yourself troduced the off, and _keep 6!1, running. It made · $2,769MacSE ,, . you want to climb mountains fo,r arid the $3,699 Mac II.', the guy.'\ ,4 · F0r the first tiine, the Macintosh , a,;,;,.a~--~...... ~---L.11,.a.-;..a ...:~' -I. ,,, ' 1, ' ,,.' . FEBRUARY 28, 1994 • PC WEEK SPECIAL REPORT A DECADE OF COMPUTING 71 moved into the enterprise. exceeding the wildest projections. launched Compaq in February fending its rich X86 turf, IBM want­ The geniuses behind NetWare's As the saying goes, Windows was in 1982 with a 30-pound arm-wrench­ ing to pilfer some of it.
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