other software

This page highlights writing about other software companies.

It covers -

• introduction
• Oracle
• Corel
• Borland
• Lotus
• SAP and CA
• Adobe
• take the money and run
• Netscape

     introduction

For an industry perspective we commend The International Computer Software Industry: A Comparative Study of Industry Evolution & Structure (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1995) edited by David Mowery and From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry (Cambridge: MIT Press 2003) by Martin Campbell-Kelly.

They are complemented by Campbell-Kelly's 1995 Development & Structure of the International Software Industry, 1950-1990 (PDF) and 2001 Not Only Microsoft: The Maturing of the Personal Computer Software Industry, 1982-1995 (PDF), and by Alfred Chandler's Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics & Computer Industries (New York: Free Press 2001).

     Oracle

Oracle was established in 1978 by two IBM relational database system experts. Initial growth involved software that permitted machines of different sizes and from different manufacturers to run a standardised database management system encompassing financial and process management, inventory and purchasing activity. Annual sales reached US$2 billion in 1994 after release of the Oracle 7 product.

Founder Larry Ellison was portrayed by Mike Wilson in The Difference between God & Larry Ellison: Inside Oracle Corporation (New York: Morrow 1997) and in The Proving Ground (London: 4th Estate 2001) by Bruce Knecht.

     Corel

For Corel see Ross Laver's Random Excess: The Wild Ride of Michael Cowpland & Corel (Toronto: Viking Penguin 1998).

     Borland

Borland was established by Philippe Kahn in 1983 to develop niche software products but came to grief after an unsuccessful strategy, from 1986 onwards, of competing with Microsoft as a diversified provider of application software: initially the Quattro Pro spreadsheet, then a wordprocessor and (in 1991) acquisition of database competitor Ashton-Tate. The rest, as they say, is history.

     Lotus

Lotus was formed in 1982 by Mitch Kapor (subsequently a co-founder of the EFF) and enjoyed major success after release of its Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet product for personal computers, overtaking VisiCalc and having a greater market value than Microsoft.

At the end of the 1980s Microsoft bundled Excel, its spreadsheet product, with Word - emerging as the global industry standard. Lotus' market share dropped from 75% in 1988 to 55% in 1991 and declined further before the company was acquired by IBM in 1995 for its Lotus Notes groupware product.

     SAP and CA

SAP was formed in Germany in 1972 when four technicians from the IBM 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group established their own company. In 1978 SAP released its R/2 enterprise resource planning system (integrating activities such as production scheduling and inventory management). In 1988 the company moved to client-server architecture, validated in 1992 with release of its R/3 system, which saw revenues more than treble. As of 2001 it employed around 27,800 people in over 50 countries and claimed to be the world's third-largest independent software supplier.

The major, albeit reverential, study is Gerd Meissner's SAP: Inside the Secret Software Power (New York: McGraw-Hill 2000).

For CA (formerly Computer Associates) see Hesh Kestin's respectful 21st Century Management: The Revolutionary Strategies That Have Made Computer Associates A Multi-Billion Dollar Software Giant (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press 92) or the more insightful 1995 Development and Structure of the International Software Industry, 1950-1990 (PDF) by Martin Campbell-Kelly.

     Adobe

Adobe was founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), focussed on desktop publishing with creation of PostScript software. During the early 1980s they worked with Apple in development of a desktop printer - now taken for granted but at that time revolutionary - and expanded the product range to encompass image manipulation software such as Photoshop and the ubiquitous Acrobat (PDF) tool.

In 1994 it absorbed competitor Aldus in a US$525 million deal. As Chandler notes in Inventing the Electronic Century, Adobe is of interest for its success in seeing off Microsoft's attempt to dominate the desktop publishing market in 1992 with Microsoft Publisher.

There's been no major corporate study of Adobe. PlanetPDF features an interview with PDF creator John Warnock and his 1991 essay on "Camelot", the precursor of PDF. A broader perspective's provided in The Myth of the Paperless Office (Cambridge: MIT Press 2001) by Abigail Sellen & Richard Harper.

     take the money and run

Fans of dot com journalism may enjoy the entertainment, sans economy, of the entertainment economy, in Robert Young's boy's-own-tale of commercializing Linux - Under the Radar: How Red Hat changed the software business and beat Microsoft (New York: Coriolis 1999).

Karen Southwick & Eric Schmidt's breathless collaboration resulted in the somewhat hagiographic High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy & the Rise of Sun Microsystems (New York: Wiley 1999), which updates Sunburst: The Ascent of Sun Microsystems(Chicago: Contemporary 1990) by Mark Hall & John Barry.

For those looking for more bite, Charles Ferguson's High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars (New York: Times 1999) tells how the developer of web-authoring software FrontPage made $100 million from Bill Gates.

     Netscape

Clark's memoir Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Startup that took on Microsoft (New York: St Martins 1999) is an interesting picture but suffers from having Clark on both ends of the camera lens.  

Speeding the Net: The Inside Story of Netscape & How It Challenged Microsoft (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press 1998) by Joshua Quittner & Michelle Slatulla has more balance.

We recommend Competing on Internet Time: Lessons From Netscape & Its Battle with Microsoft (New York: Free Press 1998) a solid study by business analysts Michael Cusmano & David Yoffie and Cusmano's Microsoft Secrets: How the World's Most Powerful Software Company Creates Technology, Shapes Markets & Manages People (New York: Free Press 1995). 

A detailed profile of AOL Time Warner, the conglomerate that gobbled up Netscape, appears in our Ketupa site.

The much-hyped The New New Thing by Michael Lewis (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1999) is a portrait of zany Jim Clark (SGI, Netscape and Healtheon founder) and his very big computer-controlled boat, rather than a map of Silicon Valley and the Internet Economy. Judging by the biographies on this page Clark is no more disfunctional than many of the silicon mafia; Lewis appears to have built the book around him because Clark wasn't filtered by media minders.

Regrettably New New is less perceptive than Lewis' famed Liars Poker (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1989), The Money Culture (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1991) and Pacific Rift (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1992). The very rich dude with the very big boat featured in perceptive profiles in Wired 2.01 and 2.10 among others.



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