IBM "Embraces and Extends" NT
Read the highlights of FTP's interview with IBM's David Gee.
by Jim Fawcette

David Gee

"IBM is the open systems company."
—David Gee, worldwide program director, alphaWorks & Java marketing, IBM

The Web has changed the competitive landscape of the computer industry, but not in the ways predicted by pundits from George Gilder and Wired magazine to exciting startups such as Netscape.

Far from making the leading computer companies obsolete and replacing all client/server development with a new Web-based paradigm, the Web is, ironically, breathing new life into the largest hardware vendors. The Web's principal effects include revitalizing the role of Big Iron and accelerating the emphasis on large-scale, enterprise-wide development.

IBM is one of the biggest beneficiaries. The $70 billion giant was saddled with scores of proprietary computers that couldn't talk to one another. It seemed that incoming chairman Lou Gertsner's sole hope was to turn IBM into another EDS. Now, with the Web, all these systems are suddenly tied together. Often it is better to be lucky than good.

To its credit, IBM quickly recognized how to leverage the Web, becoming one of the first Java licensees, and produced some of the better-rated virtual machines running across every platform. The need for systems expertise to integrate complete business systems into intranets and extranets also plays to IBM's strengths, whose field sales force is five figures strong and whose thousands of technical staff members often reside full time at larger clients.

One would think this makes IBM and Sun allies against Microsoft, but it's not that simple. Says David Gee, a young manager with the large task of evangelizing Java both inside IBM and to the hundreds of customers he visits every year, "Java is not a religion with us.... We do not see Java replacing Windows.... We do not see Network Computers as replacements for Windows PCs."

Even more telling is Gee's statement, "IBM is the open systems company.... If the customer wants Windows NT, we'll do that, if they want Java, we'll do that." This creates an interesting tension between IBM and Sun Microsystems. While Sun needs IBM to promulgate Java, the two companies' positions on Java are at odds and IBM is directly usurping Sun's position as "the open systems company." Because IBM has more people working on Java, including far more programmers writing Java applications or Java VMs, Sun is in danger of losing control of the language it created.