🚀 go-pugleaf

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 From : Mark Woolworth                      1:209/705       04 Sep 95  01:25:40 
 To   : All                                                 06 Sep 95  07:48:42 
 Subj : No more FUD! THE FACTS!                                                 
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Below is transcript of an interview with Lee Reiswig
regarding IBM's OS/2 strategy and how it fits in with the
rest of IBM's strategy.

Taken from IBM's Web site on August 24th, 1995.

start of interview text -----------------------------

IBM's OS/2 Strategy Transcript

JS = Jo Sager
LR = Lee Reiswig

JS:  Hello, I'm Jo Sager, Director of Public Relations for IBM's
Personal Software Division.  I'm here with Lee Reiswig, General
Manager of the Personal Software Products Division.

What is IBM's strategy for OS/2?

LR:  Well, we've got an aggressive plan for OS/2 enhancements and
value in the marketplace.  Not just OS/2, but all of the things
you do with OS/2 and that you want to do with OS/2 that make a
complete end user solution.

You know, the past year has been an incredible year for OS/2.
We've shipped Warp.  We've shipped the FullPac version of Warp.
We've shipped Connect.  We've announced OS/2 for the Power PC.
We've expanded the breadth of offerings.  We've shipped LAN
Server for OS/2.  The database and communications support on OS/2
are having record years.  We've got CICS and transaction
processing for OS/2.  Just an enormous set of capabilities for
customers who want to do real mission critical work on this
operating system.

But, we're not stopping with that.  We're focused on integration.
We're focused on reducing the cost of ownership for customers, on
making it simpler to use all of these technologies in new
applications and new solutions.  We're going to be doing
integrated offerings of support for our servers on OS/2 that take
hundreds of products and reduce them down to tens of products.
The ability to manage all of these products in a network around
the world will be significantly enhanced.  The ability to distr
ibute them electronically, to diagnose problems and fix them all
from a single point in the enterprise or multiple points, however
customers want to do that, we'll be delivering in the near
future.

Of course, we're going to be shipping OS/2 for the Power PC in
the new microkernal based OS/2 version that is extremely
scalable, that supports servers and SMP capabilities, that will
have the best performance in the marketplace.  And all of this
great integrated server work we are doing runs on top of that.

So, the base that OS/2 has created is just now beginning to
evolve in a very significant way; new application development
tools and visual tools from IBM that are really compelling and
getting the top marks in the industry.  New mobile support, new
preload support for manufacturers around the world so that OS/2
can come preconfigured on systems for customers.

Even in the consumer marketplace we see it, new multimedia
capabilities.  I think that it's just a tremendous range of
support that we're seeing evolve now and will be enhanced by the
future deliveries of OS/2.

And what I'm really hopeful about is that the market will see the
shift from "the operating system" up to the value of what the
operating system can mean in terms of real solutions, real
customers and real users.

OS/2 Strategy Interview

JS:  So has the strategy changed at all?

LR:  It hasn't changed in any significant way for the past five
years that I can see.  However, it's evolution means that the
realization of the strategy is happening and that means the focus
shifts to what you can do now rather t han "my multitasking is
better than your multitasking," or "my 32 bits are better than
your 32 bits."

Technology is still very important and as I have said, we're
going to enhance it dramatically.  But it's all in the value
proposition back to customers and users to make things easier to
do, less expensive and more responsive.  The realization of that
strategy is happening now for OS/2.

JS:  So is the consumer, the end user still in the strategy for
OS/2?

LR:  Oh yes, very much because we see a very tight connection
between what users do at work and what they want to do the rest
of the time.  We also see the consumer becoming more connected.
And OS/2's great strengths were in its connection ability and its
ability to multitask and do real work while connected.  And to
mask the complexity of connections is why we did Warp Connect
just this year, for the enterprise customers.

The Internet access kit that's in Warp has been enhanced.  You
can download a new Web browser, a new news reader, new tools for
the internet, all that enhancement is going into Warp and
shipping incrementally without a new Warp product.

We are going to do more for the consumer market, particularly a
new family FunPac that's coming that has games and edutainment
and helpful things to use at home that are exploited with OS/2.
We're doing a game developer's conference to get more games on
OS/2.

And so, we see a very important connection between the continuum
of users, whether they are stand alone or connected or in an
enterprise or a big server connected to another server.  That's
all a continuum to us and our strategy really deals with that and
I think appropriately positions the investments as the base
corporate strength that we have and then extending it into the
other marketplace.


JS:  So Lee, given what you just said, the New York Times
articles that said IBM is not going to continue developing OS/2
for the desktop doesn't make sense.

LR:  Couldn't be further from the truth.  OS/2's greatest
success, and certainly known by the company and Lou in
particular, was that its value was to our corporate customers.
That's what the whole base of OS/2 was initially developed for;
the mission critical nature of it and performance nature of it.
And that was not just a server thought, that's a desktop and
server, that's client/server, that's the integration of the
desktop and the server that is seamless that OS/2 has an d now
Microsoft with Windows 95 and NT has got it all gorped up.

JS:  Gorped?

LR:  OS/2's greatest strength was its seamlessness between the
client and the server.  So, Lou's statements about desktop were
intended to mean that the consumer market and the stand alone
user market, desktop users, were our seco ndary priority, not our
primary priority.  Our primary priority was client server in the
corporate enterprise.

Now, we did Warp last Fall to great acclaim in the market,
frankly, at the request of corporate customers saying "we want
our users to understand the value of OS/2, not just in the
corporate environment, we'd like to get that value at home when
they are connected and doing things at home."  And so our thrust
with Warp was to expand our market from the corporate enterprise
space into the consumer and stand alone desktop market, not to
sacrifice our corporate market.

And that's what we were trying to communicate.  The Press took
that as "we were abandoning the desktop."  We're not abandoning
the desktop, the desktop is fundamental to OS/2's value in the
client/server environment.

JS:  In terms of Microsoft having two products out there, NT and
Windows 95, and their message has been very confused, can you
address that in terms of how OS/2 handles that same issue?

LR:  I think OS/2 is just a far better solution for corporate
customers because it provides the single consistent interface for
all the applications and the users that Windows 95 and NT don't
do.  And, frankly Microsoft's strategy y is very fractured right
now because they've been telling the world that NT is the answer
to scalability and portability and yet it doesn't scale down to
what most people can use on their desktop today, even in the
corporate enterprise.

So now there is a Windows 95 product, the next version of DOS and
Windows, that somehow is supposed to be scalable and portable.
Well, what does a customer choose?  The corporate customer is
really faced with NT on the workstation and NT on the server.
They really don't have a choice like OS/2 to provide a modern,
small, well tuned, proven, high performance client and server
operating system.  Exactly the same one and no seams and no
boundaries between the support that's available on one side of
that connection to the other.


JS:  It's accepted wisdom that OS/2 Warp is superior technology
to Windows 95.  What makes it superior?

LR:  Well, probably the greatest advantage it has is that it is
not a new operating system.  It's not a 1.0 release of a new
operating system.  It has been refined and tuned now through four
major releases and it has all the cap abilities that Windows 95
promised.  We shipped that four years ago.  It's had the
experience in the market with real customers and real
applications.

And, frankly Windows 95 didn't get to where OS/2 is.  Microsoft
hyped it as going to be something greater than OS/2.  It doesn't
multitask 16 bit Windows applications, so if you run your
existing applications on Windows 95, it can bring it right to its
knees, just like DOS and Windows.  You have to make an investment
in an entirely new set of applications to get that benefit.  Its
user interface is a poor copy of OS/2's workplace shell.  It
doesn't have all the object oriented capabilities that come from
our leading object technology, that make applications easier and
faster to write, make them easier to use for users.  It's a much
more complete and thought out system as opposed to a first
release new attempt at this by Microsoft.

JS:  Is it harder for a DOS\Windows 3.1 user to transition to
OS/2 Warp than to Windows 95?

LR:  Actually I think it's a lot easier for them.  We have a more
complete user interface that's totally compatible with the
existing DOS\Windows application set.  So users will find a
transition to OS/2 as easy or easier than a transition to
Windows 95.

The other great thing about OS/2 and Warp is that you can
actually have DOS\Windows and Warp simultaneously on your system,
and you can go back and forth if you are uncomfortable.  The
changes you make while you're in Warp are there when you go to
Windows, and when you make changes in Windows they're there when
you go to Warp.  You can't do that with Windows 95, it's a one
way trip and you can't get back.

JS:  And then what happens when those users want to run, if
they're using Warp, what happens when they want to run Windows 95
apps?

LR:  What Windows 95 apps is the question.  It's going to be some
time, I think, before we see a large majority of compelling
Windows 95 applications.  It turns out, we learned this with
OS/2, that it takes some time for the application community to
convert their applications to be 32 bit, to be multitasking, and
to do a better application on that base than what they've done on
Windows 3.1.

So we are going to see enhancements by ISVs to their existing
Windows applications because they're not going to ignore sixty
million Windows users out there.  And, those applications are
going to run great in Warp and they are the ones our users are
familiar with.  There'll be the inexpensive upgrades for them to
take and use for the next couple of years.

I think it will be a couple of years before we really see new
compelling Windows 95 applications.  Now, we're on a strategy
with ISVs to create multi-platform applications.  Not just
Windows applications and not just OS/2 applications, but a single
investment that addresses both marketplaces, millions of users
and better business for ISVs.  And I'm convinced that a majority
of the applications over the next couple of years won't be
limited to Windows 95 or to OS/2 or to Unix or to Macintosh.
They'll actually be able to run using our object technology in
all those places.

So I think the future for OS/2 users and applications is very
bright.  And should the need come for us to run Windows 95
specific applications, we have all the rights and technology and
capabilities to do that and we'll make it available as we
determine that in the future.

JS:  Lee, I think our customers are quite interested in what
IBM's acquisition of Lotus means to OS/2.  Can you tell us about
that?

LR:  Well, it means a lot to IBM and to the industry and to the
customers, and it means a lot to OS/2 as well.  Lotus brings
great strength and leadership middleware called Lotus Notes that
is really the only significant solution today for users working
together today in groups, which is how most of us work and how
most of our corporate customers work.

Lotus has been one of the longest supporters of OS/2, and
exploiters of OS/2 with their Smart Suite set of products, with
their Notes client and server capabilities.  In fact, 80 percent
plus of all the Notes servers that exist in the world run on OS/2
today.  So it means a lot of positive things for synergy between
our plans and the Lotus company's plans and IBM's plans to have a
significant presence in the client\server market and be a leader
in solutions in that marketplace.

We are working actively with Lotus and it's great fun and it's
exciting and I think customers can expect to see a great deal of
synergy between the Lotus offerings in the future and the OS/2
offerings in the future.  Not in a proprietary sense, but in a
leadership sense because Notes is still one of the best
multi-platform solutions and is very supportive of IBM's plan to
support users no matter where they are.  It's just that we think
the Notes solutions will run best on OS/2.

JS:  Lee, what is the most important thing you want our customers
to hear from you about IBM software?

LR:  I think, clearly the most important thing that we are
focused on is how to meet their needs and how to provide
solutions that work for them in the way they work.  And how to
help them evolve to take advantage of technology to solve their
problems of competitiveness and cost pressures and cycle time
reductions.

And the things we do in software are designed to do precisely
that for customers in the easiest way.  OS/2's a part of that.
It's not all of it, it's certainly a key part of it because it
allows us to innovate, it allows us to move at a pace that is not
limited by others in the marketplace.

But it is not a proprietary strategy for us because our customers
aren't proprietary.  The facts are they have many environments.



Mark
___
 X MR/2 2.25 NR X OS/2 has done since 1992 what Windows 95 still cannot do.

--- Maximus/2 3.00
 * Origin: Caddis OS/2 BBS Las Vegas, NV (702)453-6981 USR V.34 (1:209/705)




---
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