Netscape’s Andreessen talks server, Java strategy

IDGNS: Netscape has maintained that one advantage of its products over Microsoft’s is that they are multi-platform. However, when it comes to the client, Microsoft will soon bring out browsers for Windows 3.1, Macintosh, and Unix. How will Netscape respond?

Andreessen: Yeah, they’ve been promising that for three years and they haven’t delivered. It’s not in their best interest to do that so they’ll never do a good job of it. And of course that continues to be the case on the server side where not only does Microsoft not support all the different variances of Unix and NetWare that people are using in server environments, but they also don’t support prior versions of Windows NT either. So Netscape’s products continue to span 100 percent of what businesses currently have installed and Microsoft’s span about 20 percent.

IDGNS: How about in the server space? Through Windows NT Microsoft has gained a firm foothold in the entry- and medium-level server market. With this in mind, how does Netscape plan to set itself apart from Microsoft?

Andreessen: The interesting thing about servers of course is that just like desktops these days, they all have to be hooked into a network and they all have to work with each other, so a server that only works with itself or others of the same kind is virtually useless. So we find a tremendous number of customers using NT and also using Unix and often also using NetWare and also using mainframes. And Netscape’s products, rather uniquely, will run across all those and will let you basically tie those together. Including, like I said, across other versions of NT. One of the things Microsoft does, like when version NT 4.0 comes out, despite the fact that there are all these NT 3.5 businesses installed out there, Microsoft no longer supports them with its own applications and Netscape does. When NT 5.0 comes out the same thing will be true of all the existing NT 4.0 systems and Netscape will continue to support them and ship products for them and Microsoft won’t. Again, there’s this fundamental difference in our strategies because Microsoft is trying to sell operating system upgrades, whereas we’re trying to support the entire installed base which is much bigger. And of course that also extends back to the database. Microsoft only supports Microsoft SQL Server database in any real effective way and of course that has a very small market share compared to Oracle [Corp.], IBM, Sybase [Inc.], Informix [Software Inc.], and others.

IDGNS: Has Netscape’s messaging and groupware vision changed over the last year?

Andreessen: Not really. We’re delivering it much more than we were year ago. The products all exist now, they’re shipping, customers are deploying them. What we’ve really solidified that has been groundbreaking for the industry is the idea that messaging and groupware should all be based on open standards without sacrificing any functionality, which we have now delivered. And also that you should be able to manage and use them from a single, large-scale, replicated LDAP [Lightweight Directory Access Protocol] directory, including full support for secure e-mail and secure groupware. So we’ve now implemented all that and it’s in the process of rollout at thousands of companies.

IDGNS: Hasn’t excluding DCOM [Distributed Component Object Model], in other words Microsoft’s technologies, from your object model shut your products off from companies looking for vendors who can supply versatile products?

Andreessen: Actually we just acquired Kiva Software [Corp.], which is a company that does a state-of-the-art application server for building three-tier applications in a networked environment, and that product has full support for DCOM, which we will continue to support.

IDGNS: Couldn’t it be said that Java is no more open than ActiveX?

Andreessen: No.

IDGNS: Why not?

Andreessen: Because Java is being implemented by about 140 licensees. Microsoft’s ActiveX, of course, is only implemented by Microsoft. That is not to say that Java is the most open thing that has come along, but there is a huge difference.

IDGNS: As for the standardization process, it could take years. How do you expect Java to evolve in the meantime?

Andreessen: Java already has a well established mechanism for evolving. The virtue of the way the current set-up is working is that all of these 140-some licensees have signed contracts with JavaSoft that basically mandate compatibility with the ongoing Java specification that comes out of JavaSoft [Inc.]. So there is, de facto, a way to maintain standardization and uniformity while the standards process itself is involved, in parallel. So there is a combination of de jure and de facto standards activities that are happening around Java. It’s kind of a nice two-step process because the licensing contract works for now and the standards process will work for the long term.

IDGNS: Netscape has just taken the “Java-compatible” logo off its current version of Navigator. When will the company put it back?

Andreessen: Within a quarter. We’re very rapidly coming out with full JDK 1.1 support. We had some code-based compatibility issues. Netscape was the first licensee of Java over two-and-a-half years ago. And in the process of getting Java to work right in our products over the last two-and-a-half years we diverged a little bit too much from the Sun [Microsystems Inc.] code base and we’re reconciling that right now and the logo will go immediately back on. … It should be next quarter for sure.

IDGNS: Do you think the case currently brought against Microsoft’s bundling of Windows and IE 4.0 is also applicable to Windows NT Server and IIS [Internet Information Server]?

Andreessen: I don’t really have an answer to that and the reason is because it’s a legal question and has to do with the [U.S. Department of Justice-Microsoft] consent decree and the wording of the consent decree and I’m not a lawyer so I can’t really give an evaluation of that. …Over the long term, it certainly should. I just don’t know if in this particular case the existing consent decree does or not. And the DOJ [U.S. Department of Justice] has very carefully made the current argument one based on the current consent decree.

IDGNS: Netcaster, Netscape’s push module apparently has not been overwhelmingly successful. How will you develop this product?

Andreessen: We don’t see any evidence of that in the market.

IDGNS: Well, tell me how successful it has been, or how you gauge that.

Andreessen: We gauge that a number of ways. We gauge that in terms of number of users using the channel finder on the Netscape site. We also gauge that through direct customer surveys that we do on a quarterly basis.

IDGNS: And what are you finding?

Andreessen: We’re finding that customers who use it like it a lot. There’s a lot that still has to be done to evangelize the content creation in this medium. I don’t think people fully understand how to use the medium yet. We also have to make the process easier for the user. So those are things that we’re working on and there should be improvements in the next version of Communicator. We’re finding that a significant percent, I don’t recall what the exact number is, that a significant percent of Communicator users use Netcaster. And then, with the improvements we can make over the next few quarters, I think we can drive that up quite a bit.

IDGNS: What do you think will come of the rumor that was circulating at Comdex that Netscape, IBM and its Lotus [Development Corp.] division, Sun, and Novell [Inc.] are forming a common front to take on Microsoft?

Andreessen: There’s actually an acronym that has come out recently, that Microsoft first introduced at their analyst meeting a few months ago, and the acronym is NOISE and it stands for Netscape, Oracle, IBM, Sun and Everyone else. And Microsoft, of course, uses it disparagingly and we think it’s pretty funny. It turns out that of course all these companies, including Novell and others, we all have a common vision for how the network is becoming the center of the universe and how networks of the future are going to interconnect basically every business and every individual in the world with a dizzying range of access devices, PCs, NCs [network computers], many other kinds of devices, hand-held TV-based devices, many different back-end server systems, databases, legacy systems, and extending to both business-to-business and business-to-consumer, [and] e-commerce, in a very large way. And we have banded together a whole series of tactical, strategic partnerships to pursue that, ranging from the NC to CORBA [Common Object Request Broker Architecture] to Java. So you’ll see a lot more stuff coming out of that alliance in the next few years. The alliance is very much based on practical business opportunities. There’s no formal coalition. It’s strictly one based on business opportunities, but it is one that’s been very effective over the last couple of years. Much more effective than people had anticipated.

IDGNS: Designed at the exclusion of Microsoft, or just because of the network-centric paradigm that is becoming more prevalent?

Andreessen: No, it’s very much not to the exclusion of Microsoft. It’s very much a reflection of the network paradigm and it’s a reflection that in the network paradigm things like operating systems start to matter less and less and things like e-commerce, for example, start to matter more and more. So, Microsoft certainly can participate in that world, but as far as all these companies are concerned that world should be based on open standards, it should be a cross-platform world and it should be a world that lets all systems work together, with no one being excluded. And it’s a world that should give customers maximum choice and maximum flexibility, and typically Microsoft’s self interests precludes them from participating in efforts like that.

IDGNS: Analysts have said Netscape needs to do more to push its server products into large enterprises. What are you doing to address that?

Andreessen: We’re building out a sales force very quickly. We’re building out our global support and sales channels quickly. We’re building out our professional services organization and our partnerships with third-party consultants and integrators very quickly. We also just did two acquisitions over the last couple of weeks that considerably bolster our server offerings. One was of Kiva Software [Inc.], which is application server software that also provides connectivity to legacy systems like mainframes out of the box. And we also acquired Actra Business Systems which does EDI-based business-to-business and also business-to-consumer commerce applications around our servers. So that considerably broadens and deepens our server offerings and we’re getting great feedback from that.

IDGNS: Are you planning to acquire any more companies? Are there any more parts to the products and your strategy that you need to pursue?

Andreessen: These two [areas] are ones we’ve been working on for a while. We don’t have any on deck immediately. I wouldn’t be surprised if over the next year we were to acquire some service-oriented companies to bolster our ability to do integration for our customers. And we will presumably do other product acquisitions, but we don’t have anything on deck at the moment.

IDGNS: It’s been said that Lotus, IBM, and Sun, although they’re Netscape partners, they also pose a threat to Netscape’s intranet and e-commerce business. Can you address that?

Andreessen: Actually, IBM and Sun are our two biggest OEMs. They sell an unbelievable amount of hardware based on our software and they bundle our software with a large percentage of the hardware they ship, both on the desktop and the server. So by and large, the relationships are ones that are mutually beneficial. Now in some cases they have their own software development activities, but we rarely run into them in accounts from a software standpoint anymore, and especially Sun. And most likely it is a Sun or an IBM sales rep selling computer systems that is also selling Netscape software to those accounts because that makes it easiest for him to close his deal to sell computer systems.

IDGNS: What’s the latest on the thin-client JavaBeans container that was going to be available in pre-release form by the end of this year?

Andreessen: It’s out. It’s the JDK 1.1 support. If you go to our Web site you can get the JDK 1.1 add-on which is in late beta. And when that ships that’s when the Java-compatible logo goes back on. But with that in beta, that gives you the ability to run JavaBeans on the client. And also our existing Enterprise Server has the ability to run JavaBeans on the server. So you can write JavaBeans-based applications that run across both the client and the server on any platform. And we also just shipped our Visual JavaScript tool which lets you build drag-and-drop JavaBeans applications that run across both the client and the server visually. So there’s a lot of momentum starting to take off behind JavaBeans because it’s sort of the universal component model that a lot of people have been waiting for. It’s really oriented towards the ‘Net. It’s oriented towards building these cross-platform applications. We’re also taking all the different services we provide in our products, like messaging services, directory services, security services, intelligent agents, content management and so on, and we’re exposing all those services as JavaBeans so that programmers can use them in their applications [for] database access.

IDGNS: What are your XML (Extensible Markup Language) authoring tools plans and how do they fit in with the Java-based tools you announced at Comdex?

Andreessen: We’re going to add XML support and directory [services] to Visual JavaScript. And the other thing is we have a componentized rendering engine that’s the basis for all our future client products called Gemini, is the public code name, and Gemini is out in developer release now. And Gemini will do both dynamic HTML- and XML-based rendering. And in its final release form next year it will also do XML-based editing.

IDGNS: When next year?

Andreessen: Around mid-next year is when the final version will most likely come out that will include XML support. And that will run across all platforms. It’ll be based on Java. It’ll be itself a JavaBean so you can plug it into other applications or you can also plug it into Windows applications or other OS-specific applications and you can extend it on the fly. And it will do full XML.

IDGNS: How does that relate to your announcement on Java tools?

Andreessen: What we announced last week was Visual JavaScript which is a visual development environment for applications that span both the client and the server. And so one of the things you do when you build an application like that in many cases is of course you create Web pages that serve as the front-end for that application. In that case we’ll support the creation of XML-based Web pages for the front-end for those applications. That’s a different kind of thing than what we’re doing with Gemini. Gemini is aimed at being the component that would run in the front-end and would provide the ability for users to create documents on the fly. Like with Communicator today, how it lets you compose an e-mail message, for example, in HTML. It will also let you compose it in XML.

Netscape, based in Mountain View, California, can be reached at +1-650-528-2555 or on the World Wide Web at https://www.netscape.com/.