simply unavailable networks will keep stan
d-alones in business for years, but it's becoming clear that server apps are hot.
Modern server apps offer services and processing to large groups of people trying to accomplish something together. That's the agenda that information technology experts need to respond to now. Personal productivity apps haven't made that big a dent in these kinds of collaborative tasks.
Case in point: How do you enable dispersed groups of people too numerous to attend the same videoconference to work together in real time? Recently I previewed three apps that address the problem of simultaneous, real-time collaboration: Venue, a virtual office, from Activerse (Austin, TX); Symposium, an on-line classroom aimed at corporate training, from Centra Software (Lexington, MA); and Auditorium, a virtual space for large meetings, from Xerox PARC spin-off PlaceWare (Mountain View, CA). Time will tell how well they deliver on their promise, but in concept they're strikingly powerful programs.
They provid
e in a box what an IS shop would be hard-pressed to cobble together on its own. And they do it by marrying established client-side technologies like GUIs, 3-D graphics, and digital audio with new server-side technologies like the Web and Java. Significantly, the developers of these apps didn't invent these technologies -- they merely assembled them in interesting and worthwhile ways. Where once developing those apps was no task for the fainthearted, you need no longer be a master of kernel architectures and C to produce useful server-side code.
Our cover story focuses on the OS side of this equation -- specifically, the soon-to-be-released NT 5.0. It's the most significant NT since 3.51 achieved basic usability and stability. Reading this story, I was struck by how different it is from those articles we used to write about desktop OSes. What's important isn't the details of NT's internals, but how concentric layers of middleware ripple out from it to provide application services that will eliminate year
s of work from development projects.
Enterprise computing experts have long pointed out that real companies need PC operating systems that do much more than make a microprocessor scream. Microsoft addressed some of that with BackOffice. Now it has dropped the other shoe with an array of software to make distributed computing work on a large scale: directory services, security, object support, and more.
Take platforms like NT and Unix, make liberal use of components and the Net, and you have a server application development platform that just won't quit. That's great news for those pushing the envelope with components, network computers, and other net-centric technology. But I think it's also increasingly the tune that even fat-client advocates will march to. After all, ultimately you want to harness all that graphical and information processing power to make the most of the server-side apps that draw together your company, its partners, and its customers.
On another subject, subscribers will
notice a new feature section in this month's issue: Reseller. Our research tells us that roughly a third of our subscribers are value-added resellers, systems integrators, independent software developers, and similar providers of IT services. Our new section will focus on technology that you can use flexibly and profitably to meet the needs of your customers. If you're a reseller who doesn't subscribe but buys us on the newsstand, you can check out this new section by visiting our Web site. In either case, let us know what you think.
Mark Schlack, Editor in Chief,
mschlack@bix.com
Serve 'Em Up Hot
