July 17, 2000
Three months ago, I started a series on the revolution and evolution in our computer systems. In April, "Interesting Times Part I" covered the revolutionary changes in hardware this year. In May, Part II discussed the evolutionary changes in operating systems. Part III, wraps up this series with some observations and analysis about the evolution of application suites and the impact of those changes to business and individual users. I also look at the evolution in our environment and predict whether future suites will dominate the market.
Application suites started as a business deal to sell a bundle of office applications for a price less than the sum of the separate components. The first versions of suites were put together with whatever applications existed at that time. A typical early version of a suite had a word processor, spreadsheet, database, and one or more utility programs such as a personal information manager. Since these programs had been developed by separate groups, the programs in the suite had different appearances, inconsistent user interfaces, and frequently didn't work well together.
While the concept of a suite was revolutionary, the subsequent development of suites has been evolutionary. Starting with the random collection of working programs, suites developed in two essential directions.
First, the way the programs operated evolved. The external user interface took on a common look and feel. Commands that performed similar tasks were moved into a common pull-down menu, with near identical options. Vendors used shared code for the GUI and file operations. Surface integration moved inward to commands, files and later, a common file format. The original promise of the suite as an integrated set of tools became reality over time.
Second, suites expanded beyond the original four applications. As desktop publishing (DTP) moved into the mainstream, DTP tools were added to the suite. When the Internet growth exploded, Web building tools became a part of the mix. As small business was recognized as an important market, organizational and accounting applications were added. By this time, a selection of suites from basic to very inclusive small-business packages became available as the vendors refined their marketing aim.
Customers, especially businesses, benefited from the reduced suite price and the assurance of compatibility with everyone having the same software. It also reduced the overhead of determining who should have which program, and making sure it got installed in the right place. The software vendors benefited even more. Selling a suite often replaced a sale of a word processor or spreadsheet with a suite for more money. With the additional software in the suite, vendors had opportunities to sell more training and books, enhance their image with customers, and lock out those nasty single-product competitors.
Once the suites had evolved to an integrated look, the users were attracted by several benefits. A new user only needed to learn one set of GUI standards to be able to operate the basic functions of any of the suite's applications. This reduced the need for detailed training because users could learn each application incrementally once they knew the basics. Each application focused the interface on only the functions needed for that task.
Even though a typical suite contained a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation tool, and a database, the user was not faced with a complex interface that supported all of those applications at once. Because of the way suites developed, they were already partitioned into separate task areas, which turned out to be a major benefit for the users.
Software vendors found many reasons to continue and extend the reach of suites. While increasing the number of functions in each application added to the size and programming complexity, the sharing of GUI and other common elements reduced that effort. With the suite already partitioned by task, it could be easily extended by adding new tasks as separate applications that shared the common elements of the suite.
Today's huge suites of 10 or more applications started with the three basics: word processor, spreadsheet, and database. Both user demands and competitive business pressures forced the growth to current sizes. There was another more subtle effect of selling suites: Once customers bought a suite of applications, they no longer needed to look at alternate suppliers for any of the tasks included in the suite. This closed the market to vendors of single applications, even though those applications might be significantly better than the one in the suite.
As a competitive weapon, suites were in the nuclear class. In order to compete, a vendor had to offer a suite or risk being locked out of a large segment of the market. Suites had selling points to customer management too. A common suite meant the ability to exchange and share documents without problems inside the company. It also meant one set of training and documentation needs, and trained people could be effective in any part of the corporation. The bottom line was that the corporation's bottom line would benefit.
The suite's advantages came slowly, and at a price. Most users needed only one or two of the applications for their work and rarely used the others. The unused applications represent a spent cost for which there was no benefit. The disk space they used sometimes forced hardware upgrades in the days before multi-gigabyte drives were standard. The enhanced suite was more complex because of the added functions.
When commands were moved or the GUI was restructured, the user was knocked back on the learning curve. This productivity hit was aggravated by new bugs that had to be found the hard way -- by losing work. People who once wrote a progress report in 30 minutes now spent all day enhancing the report with graphics and fancy formatting. One company had a fancy WP package removed from all the desktops because of the time wasted by people emphasizing form over content.
Some people used a spreadsheet as a database or word processor because that was the only tool they knew. Most people stuck to the 10 percent of the application that they needed and ignored the rest, sometimes doing things the slow way because they couldn't find a better one buried in the complexity.
In an effort to sell a suite as having the most functionality, every vendor added new functions without much regard as to how easy they were to use. In the rush to develop new functions, duplication of code and limited testing yielded a bumper crop of bugs on a bloated set of executables.
Magazine articles aggravated this complexity by doing reviews that essentially counted up the number of functions and declared the winner on the basis of who had the largest number. Competition for the most functionality caused ease of use and reliability to fall by the wayside.
Business problems started with the pain of upgrades. New, sometimes improved versions, came out yearly. Bug fixes arrived weekly, sometimes daily. Getting work done while applying all of this was a support nightmare for most companies. Some upgrades had to be backed out because they were incompatible with critical company applications. Other upgrades had to be applied rapidly across the whole company because they used an incompatible format with the prior version.
The cost of this software support was a major portion of the calculated $40,000 plus to manage one corporate personal computer for five years. Managers were stymied in figuring payback on software investments because of all the support costs. Companies found themselves locked into a specific suite because of proprietary file formats, and sometimes were forced to upgrade simply to be able to deal with electronic correspondence from another company.
Even if a better product came along, the cost of conversion and retraining made it impossibly expensive. The benefits of suites were the tip of the iceberg, while the problems underneath could threaten the company ship. All in all, early suites were a very mixed blessing.
Software vendors, impressed with the success of office suites started offering other kinds of suites. In my research for this article, I was surprised with the range of suites. From utilities to graphics to Internet tools, suites exist for a wide variety of application areas. Suites benefit the SOHO user because of the wide range of tools they offer. While you might not expect to ever use a database when you buy a suite, they are very useful for organizing complex information that needs to be shared.
Similarly, other tools can become valuable extensions of the basic tools everyone uses: word processors and spreadsheets. A new application is already familiar because the File and Edit menus always have the same basic operations in the same place. In addition to office suites, other popular application areas have developed suites.
Networking suites are available from Microsoft and Novell. Developer suites are available from major software vendors including IBM, Microsoft, Imprise (Borland), Sun, Watcom, and others. For the graphics enthusiast, Adobe has a number of suites that it calls collections. Despite the problems office suites had during their rapid growth, their success documents the viability of this approach.
Tools compatible with Microsoft Office are now available from three sources running on several platforms. Corel has recently acquired several new companies and their programs, and it currently offers a wide range of applications. Corel supports Windows 95, 98, and NT, Windows 3.1, Mac, Linux and Unix as a server.
The server version, Corel Word Perfect 8 for Unix, has word processing, MS Word97 translation, spreadsheets, charting, and drawing on a server and terminals. It runs on HP UX, Solaris, SCO OpenServer, IBM AIX, and Linux (See Jerry Pournelle's column on Corel WP Office For Linux. Also, more information at Corel Products And Corel Word Perfect for UNIX).
Applixware, reborn as Vista Source, offers its Office 5.0 for Linux, and Office 4.4 for a wide range of platforms, plus a Java version that can run on any Java supported Web browser. Version 4.4 supports Linux on Intel, Alpha, and PPC processors, as well as on FreeBSD and Solaris (Vers 4.42). It also supports Dec Alpha, HP, Solaris on Intel, SGI, AIX, and NT and Windows 9x (Vers 4.41).
Star Office, now owned by Sun Microsystems, offers a full range of tools. Along with a word processor, spreadsheet, database, and vector drawing, Star Office has a presentation tool, a Web page builder, Internet mail, plus task and event lists. Originally, Star Office supported Windows, Mac, Linux, OS/2 and Solaris. The current 5.2 release includes interchange with MS Office 2000 and several other enhancements.
Office suites have evolved from a rough set of miscellaneous applications into a smooth package of integrated tools that share many features. The rapid pace of change in suites has slowed as functions reached complete coverage for an application, and new tools were added to the suite to extend its reach. In the office market, suites command the great majority of market share.
Outside of the office suites, there is a much greater range of applications available and much less dominance by suites. This is due in part to the earlier stage of development in areas like Internet tools, graphics, and 3-D. It is also due to the diversity of the methods used and a lack of agreement of the best organization and interface. In short, these areas are at an earlier stage in evolution toward suites.
It is probable that suites will never dominate these or other application areas for an even stronger reason. The environment of the 1990s, which programs and suites evolved in, has changed dramatically. There are three major reasons for this.
First, Linux, like the Internet, has exploded into popularity. Linux reintroduces a diversity that had been fading under dominance of the Microsoft monopoly. Linux has introduced concepts of operating systems and alternative ways to operate to a very broad audience, reaching to the top of the IT executives. Linux has rekindled the excitement with personal computers in a new generation. It has also served notice to all of the OS vendors that new competition has arrived in a big way. By itself, Linux has been a catalyst for new growth in both software and hardware.
Second, the open source movement, which Linux helped to popularize. Open source, once a dream of the few, now has the support of many programmers and quite a few corporations. New corporations have sprung up to bundle and support freeware, usually with a version of the Linux OS, but also with FreeBSD. Open source applications now number in the thousands and cover almost the full range of commercial applications.
Only huge integrated products like SAP are beyond the current range of freeware. Open source has begun to match major applications in capability. Three that stand out today are the StarOffice (SO) suite, GIMP, and Image Majick. The latter two are powerful graphic-manipulation tools that compete with the best Adobe has to offer.
The third reason is the Justice Department. Whether Justice succeeds in breaking Microsoft up, it has already had substantial impact. Under the glare of publicity, Justice has shown Microsoft to be an unrestrained predator in the software arena. By making Microsoft's pressure tactics more visible, it has caused Microsoft to back off from some of them. Justice has also made many companies aware at the executive level that they have been manipulated for the profit of Microsoft.
Simply by making people aware of the hidden manipulations of the market, Justice has helped open the market. Suites will continue to exist and enter new areas. But they will not dominate the application market outside of the office.
The new environment is much more competitive than the market of the 1990s. Suites do have a real audience, where users need broad coverage of an application area, consistent interface, and support. But suites will not penetrate the newest areas or the highest-performance areas. The nature of a suite is to be good at a wide range of things, but not excellent at a single thing. This is where the line will be drawn.
Listed below is a small selection of the many suites that are available, with some prices as I found them. Suite pricing can vary quite a bit, so I recommend shopping around for the best deal. I have listed as many as four prices. The first pair is the vendor's list price for the full package, then the upgrade price. The second pair, full and upgrade, is from a Micro Warehouse catalog if an identical suite is listed. These prices are preceded by MW:
The largest list of suites appears on Corel's site. For the full list, go to the Corel website and click on products. The full-meal deal, with dessert, is the Corel Word Perfect Office Suite for Small Business. It includes a mind-boggling 17 applications, covering almost everything any small-business office would ever need:
Norton Systemworks 2000 Antivirus, utilities, crashguard, cleansweep, Web support updates, and a bonus pack - MW: $59.95 Professional version also has Norton 2000 for Y2K problems and Norton Ghost for backup and cloning systems - MW: $94.95
Applixware Office for Linux: Word processor, spreadsheet, slide presentations, graphics Share files with MS Office, Corel, Lotus, and others - $99.95 Spreadsheet or word processor only - either $49.95
WP Office 2000 for Linux: Word Processing, spreadsheet, databases, presentation, personal information manager Standard edition - MW: $99.95 Deluxe edition with Corel Linux OS, Railroad Tycoon II, Import/export MS Word and Excel files - MW: $149.95
WP Office 2000 Standard - $399 (109) WordPerfect 9, Quattro Pro 9, Corel Presentations 9, CorelCENTRAL 9, Trellix 2, Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications. Voice-powered - $449 (159)
WP Office 2000 Standard plus Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Corel Print Office Professional - $499 (209) MW: $329.95 WP Office 2000 Standard plus Paradox 9, NetPerfect Small Business - $449 (159) WP Office 2000 Standard plus Adobe Acrobat Reader, Peachtree First Accounting, WinFax Basic Edition, Norton AntiVirus2000, Stamps.com Internet Postage, Amigo 2000, (charting), Online Merchant (E-store)
WP Law Office 2000 Word Processing, spreadsheet, databases, presentation, personal information manager - $499 (259) MW: $349.95 Corel WP Suite 8 Word Perfect 8, Quattro Pro 8, Presentations 8, Central 8 - $395 ($89)
Microsoft Office 2000 Standard Includes Word, Excel, Outlook, and Powerpoint - MW: $419.95 (199.95)
Microsoft Office 2000 Professional All above plus Access 2000, Publisher 2000 and small-business tools - MW: $499.95 (299.95)
Microsoft Office 2000 Premium All above plus Frontpage 2000 and Photodraw 2000 - MW: $649.95 (379.95)
Star Office Star Office 5.2: Free by download, 79 to 105 megabytes. In 11 languages, versions for Windows 95/98/NT, Solaris for Intel and SPARC, and Linux on x86. Also on a CD: With documentation $39.95; CD plus installation only $9.95. Star Office 5.1: As above in 8 languages, also includes a version for OS/2.
Adobe Design Collection: Acrobat 4.0, Photoshop 5.5, Indesign 1.0, Illustrator 8.0 - MW: $1589.95
Adobe Publishing Collection: Photoshop 5.5, Pagemaker 6.5 Plus, Illustrator 8, Acrobat 4.0 - MW: $949.95
Adobe Web Collection: Photoshop 5.5, GoLive 4.0, Illustrator 8.0 - MW: $949.95
Adobe Dynamic Media Collection: Premiere 5.1, Photoshop 5.5, Illustrator 8.0, After Effects 4.1 - MW: $1489.95
Adobe After Effects Production Bundle: After Effects 4.1 plus 2-D animation, core compositing, 3-D channel, audio tools, linear color key, spill suppressor, matte chockers - MW: $1499.95 (299.95)
All content on this site is Copyright 2001 by Bill Nicholls