NT gets plugged by Microsoft man
WE have seen Microsoft top men pass through Hong Kong during the past few months. Bill Gates was recently here and so was the Microsoft cheerleader extraordinaire, Steve Ballmer. The most recent VIP to make the trip was chief operating officer Bob Herbold, formerly of Proctor & Gamble.
Mr Gates will sit on a stool slightly higher than everyone else and look in turns bemused and bothered by the world. Mr Ballmer shouts down from a mountain top with extraordinary energy and blasts his way through an interview. Mr Herbold is not like either of them.
Bob Herbold has only been at Microsoft for a little over a year, but he is obviously a steady hand. He is also a vehement supporter of Microsoft products, as one would expect.
Mr Herbold is certain that Windows NT is the office software both for today and tomorrow.
'NT is gaining significant chunks of market share and if you look at it, it is not coming from just one source. It's coming from Novell and UNIX,' he said.
The reasons for this success are quite simple, according to Mr Herbold: quality.
'The reason it is gaining share is that the reviews suggest it is a great product and users are telling us the same thing.' He sees Windows NT as a tower of strength for Microsoft.
'I think it is a great example of the strength of the company. Version 3.1 was a good product, but not a great product. Version 3.51 is a great product,' Mr Herbold said.
Software is not something that people buy today, use and then throw away. Software is something we continue to refine and use for the length of time we use our computers. It is slowly becoming a service, not a product and Microsoft has not been slow to see this.
'We have been thinking a lot about whether we should change our strategy in how we sell our products,' Mr Herbold said.
'People end up with an ongoing relationship [with their software]. They are also thinking about support services and upgrading. That is something we are also thinking hard about.' Mr Herbold said testing was a very important part of software development at Microsoft. He also said that Microsoft used its own products. There are engineers answering the telephone who sit in front of monitors and key in the names of people asking for help. As the person asks his question, the engineer can see if this person has rung up before, who he spoke to, and what kind of response he was given.
'The whole system is a client/server system running on NT and in the middle of the afternoon in the United States you will have 1,600 or 1,700 simultaneous users on the system in four different locations throughout the country. It's a great application and it's mission critical to our company.' A great deal of Microsoft's own business is being put on NT.
'We are also implementing SAP on NT and SQL Server. We are implementing the general ledger on a worldwide basis as well as the procurement features of SAP. That's another one that will be a showcase,' he said.
It was difficult to let Mr Herbold go without asking him about the US$500 (HK$3,865) Internet box, such as the ones proposed by Apple, Sun and Oracle.
He was surprisingly frank about it. 'It could happen,' he said. 'It rather depends on bandwidth. If you have today's bandwidth or even tomorrow's bandwidth - not the bandwidth of the future - boy, are you limited!' Microsoft's position was definitely a wait-and-see one.
'I think the right assumption for Microsoft to make is let's see what can be done. If it has something to do with software related to a chip, I think there is a good chance that we can contribute in some way.'
