The next battlefield for Microsoft: E-commerce

As the debate regarding whether Microsoft has a monopoly on computer desktop operating systems grinds on, a more important question is being overlooked: How does Microsoft intend to use its desktop dominance to capture additional markets?

While Microsoft's competitors are looking for the government to declare war on the desktop operating system juggernaut, Microsoft is looking to expand into other markets. By the time its competitors and the government react, it may be too late.

Microsoft learned a valuable lesson from Netscape: If you give it away, they will come. So when Microsoft wants to enter a new market, it simply offers products at a price customers cannot refuse. Add to this Microsoft's domination of the desktop operating system, desktop application and PC server markets, as well as its rapid movement into the enterprise server and management markets, and you get the picture of a restless giant that will not be deterred - no matter what the government and its competitors do.

Enter electronic commerce. This fledgling industry offers many opportunities as well as problems. More and more consumers are making purchases online. Companies are finding it much easier and less expensive to start storefronts online than on the street. Some sites, such as Amazon.com, never even had a storefront in the first place.

Electronic commerce requires Internet access, a Web server and software for taking orders, tracking inventory and visitors, creating ads and processing credit cards. Many companies offer software that handles these tasks, but most products are expensive, proprietary and difficult to use. On top of all that, you must purchase software from numerous vendors to put together a complete electronic commerce solution.

But, using knowledge and expertise gained through its acquisition of eShop, Inc., a provider of online buying and selling technology for the Web, Microsoft has put together Site Server 3.0. This is the product that will position Microsoft to play a dominant role in the electronic commerce market.

Site Server 3.0 provides all the basic requirements for an electronic commerce site in a single package. It includes a push server, graphical log analysis tools, direct mailer, ad server and sophisticated business-to-business commerce capabilities. Even better, you can download the beta product, which is very solid, for free from Microsoft's Web site. The finished product is expected to ship in the second quarter of this year; no price has been announced.

The only catch is that Site Server is Microsoft-centric. It requires Windows NT 4.0, Internet Information Server 4.0, Internet Explorer 4.0, and relies heavily upon ActiveX and Active Server Pages.

Although Site Server may not meet everyone's needs entirely, it will fulfill most small to mid-sized companies' electronic commerce requirements. No doubt Microsoft also will make it attractive for Internet service providers to offer Site Server Commerce Edition to their customers.

The browser wars are over; Microsoft won. While competitors continue to skirmish futilely over market share in the browser arena, Microsoft is moving into electronic commerce, where it is trying to establish its operating system, Web server and Web browser as the de facto standards.

It may well take more than the Justice Department to stop Microsoft. Maybe that is what has its competitors so worried. But perhaps the battle should be fought with new technology and savvy business practices, not government intervention. Microsoft has never created a truly original technology platform; it has simply made better products than those that previously existed.

Microsoft built it and people came. It looks like electronic commerce is the next battlefield.

Dowdie is the CEO of Intellitech Consulting Enterprises, Inc., a Massachusetts-based technology consulting firm. He can be reached at ddowdie@intellitech.net.