As much as we see the Web growing on the Internet, it is growing 2-10
times as fast in the corporate arena. In order for Netscape to prosper
long term, they must meet the needs of the Corporate Web as well as the
Commercial Web.
Netscape became the corporate favorite early because they met the needs
of the MIS department. Netscape was the first browser to offer a
product with support for multiple platforms. These two key items were
the decision makers for the corporate market.
Few companies have a homogeneous computing environment. This costs a
lot of money in support and maintenance, an area often under-funded and
under-staffed. Offering a common application on virtually all of the
corporate standard platforms made Netscape MIS's darling.
Netscape also offered a supported product. Mosaic at the time was being
passed from NCSA to Spry to Spyglass and others. Those contracts took
precious time to complete. With the middlemen involved, many MIS
departements were confused as to who to look to for support.
That was 6-9 months ago. Now corporations have a wider range of
requirements. The word "standards" is a part of those new
requirements.
Defacto standards scare the MIS people. Defacto standards are often so
proprietary that no one else can implement them. This leaves no backup
in case the company folds or changes their course of action
mid-stream.
While Netscape is not proprietary in their HTML implementation, the
fact that other browser makers have not implemented these extensions
concerns an MIS manager. There are obvious standards bodies that only
accept parts of Netscape's implementation into the standards. This also
concerns our now mildly paranoid MIS manager.
Netscape's implementations are going farther from the SGML fold than
the W3 Consortium standards. For the company that will, long term,
migrate from some other document format to SGML, this is one more item
in the "against" column.
Netscape's products evolve so fast that they address areas not even
concieved of in the standards bodies such as Netscape's 2.0 addition of
Frames.
No other vendor can keep up with Netscape in providing support tools
such as editors. An application is only as good as the infrastructure
that supports it.
While we may applaud the advancements that Netscape has made, this
unchecked growth is a warning light in the old MIS school.
Netscape is trying to comfort the fearful MIS manager. They have:
- committed themselves to supporting the HTML 3.0 standards when they
do come out.
- created a developer program to assist other companies in keeping up
with their significantly changing application.
- started to create infrastructure support tools of their own, ie
Netscape Gold.
This may or may not be enough to convince MIS that Netscape is a
good thing. If we value Netscape on the Internet, we had better
hope that MIS is convinced, because as large as the Internet
market is right now, the corporate market is starting to make
it look like chump change. If Netscape cannot meet the needs
of the corporate market, it may yet be overshadowed by those who
can.
For all the money that is being sunk into the Internet, think about
where Netscape is getting the bulk of its money.
<i>&gt;From Internet commerce? no.</i>
<i>&gt;From the hype of Internet commerce? It had a wonderful stock offering.</i>
So yes.
<i>&gt;From corporate use clients? Definitly.</i>
The average Joe Blow still hasn't purchased a copy of Netscape. The
majority of Netscape's personal use revenue comes from the sale of
their bundled product that sits on store shelves. The personal use
revenue is minisule when you look at the corporate purchases that
netscape is receiving. Unless Netscape can turn their personal use
products into a good revenue stream, the corporate market will be the
long term money source.
Internet Marketing is not the only place that the web is important,
and it is not the primary revenue generating source right now. This
makes the needs of our MIS brethren important in the long term view.
If we pooh-pooh consortium standards and urge Netscape only towards
defacto standards we are doing ourselves and Netscape a disservice.
Mary
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