Resolve and Fortitude : Microsoft's ''SECRET POWER BROKER'' breaks his silence (52 page)

This renewed push to mobilize ever-greater legions of ISVs supporting Windows along with an eye dazzling public spotlight on the product tremendously pleased the few OEMs who had licensed it. Steve’s propaganda machine kept them in our camp. For OEMs shipping just MS-DOS PCs, like Compaq and IBM, there was good news as well. Customers buying Windows at retail often needed additional hardware to beef up their systems. The ripple effect, OEMs began including MS-Windows testing in their quality control efforts, yet another bit of beneficial synergy much appreciated by us. The smoldering volcano was becoming visible.

MS made her ongoing Windows push effective by doubling personnel devoted to helping other software companies write Windows apps. We had realized early on that cooperation, innovation, and success were interchangeable and mutually re-enforcing concepts. People working in the Windows support group were called evangelists. Over time—as they succeeded—they had a huge impact on the richness of its application environment. They were the unsung, true, and only heroes who eventually made the platform relevant and most popular with end-users and OEMs alike.

Igniting Windows with marketing money and adding the evangelists felt like the magic of exponential muscles visibly at work. Steve truly nailed this one, neatly clicking the final cogs in place, engineering a critical and decisive move to lay a strong and unshakeable foundation for providing quality Windows applications to consumers and businesses alike.

Not resting on their laurels, MS and IBM had already started working jointly on a successor to MS-DOS and Windows called OS/2. Its design called for adding security and networking improvements to its combined feature set while making sure that existing MS-DOS and Windows applications ran unaltered on the new platform. A key for easing the transition for end-users and guaranteeing financial health for hard at work ISV partners. With its release date set for late ’86, the world was anxiously waiting to put OS/2 through its paces.

The huge hardware performance achievements and incremental improvements in OS technologies had helped producing high performance PC software applications. Some of them had gained popularity beyond belief. Lotus had bypassed VisiCalc as the leading spreadsheet company with her Lotus 1-2-3 product in the US, trailed by MS-Multiplan for MS-DOS and later MS-Excel for Windows and the MAC. The success of her spreadsheet was based on graphics capabilities she had integrated into her flagship product. In Europe MS attacked her successfully with localized versions of Multiplan and Excel and denied her the lead. Ashton Tate was the unchallenged database powerhouse with her then superior dBase product, followed by Symantec’s Sybase. In word processing, WordStar was still alive in ’86 although it was losing its luster. WordPerfect was on its way to becoming the new text processing star, rivaled by MS-Word for MS-DOS, Windows and the MAC. Buying dedicated word processors or god-forbid typewriters were now a thing of the past, and spreadsheets had taken over as most popular analyst’s and accounting tools. Brimming with energies, the software industry was well and alive and her innovation span guaranteed PC technology to strive and become an indispensable tool for society.

AND HOW I EARNED MINE

Born in Hannover, Germany, I finished high school before joining the German army for two years instead of the mandatory eighteen months, as determined by the draft system. This move allowed me to obtain the rank of lieutenant while laying money aside. Young men despising the draft employed all possible means to avoid it. Hardy and hale and with retreating to Canada not an option, hesitantly at first I served. Joining early, I avoided interrupting my later studies. The army complemented much of what I had learned so far in life and prepared me well for a far larger role. Long a history buff, I was deeply impressed by her leadership principles which originated from the early 19
th
century. Contrary to public opinion, the German army was not looking for blind submission of complicit sheep unquestioningly following its leaders. Even in peacetime, overshadowed by the cold war, she wanted confident young men willing to marshal their intelligence and capabilities to accomplish distinct and complex tasks. I soon discovered that within well-specified parameters, you had considerable freedom to achieve defined objectives. In stark contrast to the blind obedience drilled into me—often with the aid of a bamboo stick—during the strictest of upbringings. Resourcefulness was not only desired but rewarded! I found myself accorded ever-higher levels of autonomy and trust by the chain of command. Allowing me, for instance, to organize and lead an officer class of 56 trainees during the last three months of my stay. For the first time in my life, I gained a solid sense of what it meant to manage and be boss. I relished it, gave leading the cadre my best effort, and never looked back.

The savings from my army stint came in handy as I worked my way through university and obtained a diploma
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in mathematics. Yet, my primary source of income soon became developing software programs for agricultural and pharmaceutical companies, applying my ever-growing statistical knowledge. I learned to write them in two different native assembler languages specific for International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) mainframe
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computers and in several higher level programming languages. When writing software programs was not enough to support me, I started teaching mathematics and physics classes at a local high school. Germany had a teacher deficit and welcomed non-degreed workers like myself after I had passed a half time math exam. I had a terrific time learning how to teach the ten to eighteen years old high school students. Young as I was, I strived to make learning fun for them. The teaching experience together with my programming background helped me to later land my first employment in the computer industry. As I made my way through university without being supported by my parents, I learned to appreciate my independence and how to be responsible for my own well-being. The invaluable lessons provided by working hard to gain and sustain my individual freedom and financial health influenced my work ethics for the rest of my life.

My professional career was officially launched in the fall of ’72, when I joined Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in Munich. DEC’s business was selling minicomputer
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systems, and the PDP 11/20 was her newest baby. My first job was teaching computer programming classes to customers, and learning two additional assembler programming languages and the internals of several OSs in the process. The toughest teaching assignments given to me happened during so-called onsite classes. Taught at customer facilities where I had to educate a very clever and super knowledgeable audience. The demanding subjects the students desired to be instructed about were sometimes unknown to me ahead of time. Improvising I was sometimes only hours ahead of my students by reading up over lunch and teaching the self-same topic in the afternoon. Talk about having fun learning something new and being stressed teaching it to a challenging student body minutes later! My second job as sales trainer ended in a promotion to manage DEC’s Munich-based training center, which I turned around, restoring its high profitability. Two and a half years later I accepted a marketing manager position in DEC’s training division headquarters in Bedford, Massachusetts. Before departing DEC in 1981, I spent a year as marketing manager, this time in the banking and insurance product group in Merrimac, New Hampshire. Due to office politics I became bored and frustrated. Back in Munich, a short stint with National Semiconductors followed, where I learned how to sell semiconductor components to German computer manufactures.

Having missed the first wave of the PC revolution, I was easily lured away from struggling Nat-semi by Mike Spindler, soon to be Apple’s European SVP located in Paris. In ’81 he offered me a marketing manager position to guide Apple’s European software ambitions and promised to promote me to head a to-be-founded European subsidiary of Claris, an Apple-owned software company. After that plan was dropped by management I saw no reason to stay. I relished the two years I worked for the company, learned a ton about the PC industry in general and how essential software is for her success in particular. Not wanting to play second fiddle in a mainly hardware focused enterprise, I moved on. Before leaving I attended a last meeting with Steve Jobs, who showed a portable Apple II and gave a progress report in regard to the Macintosh. Despite his prima donna aura I peppered him with questions, annoying Mike, who took me aside during recess saying “You do not cross this man if you want to have a career in this company.” He was right on, I quit one week later…

A software guy at heart, a small company called Microsoft (MS) had caught my eyes. She was founded in ’75 at the dawn of the PC industry. I got involved with her international division when brokering a deal to localize her Multiplan spreadsheet into several European languages for the Apple IIe introduction in March, ’83. Helping me to get that job done was Jean-Louis Gassée, then Apple’s French country manager and an avid admirer of MS and founder Bill Gates.

When Mike Spindler learned I had accepted a subsidiary manager position in Germany working for MS, he roundly congratulated me, expressing his desire for local cooperation. He seemed proud to have an ex-Apple guy run MS’s new sub.
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My dream had long been running my own software company. Though technically never achieved, I had so far been consistently lucky to align myself with cutting-edge American IT entities. Each challenged me to make a difference, implicitly entrusting me with vaster operating autonomy than a typical German company would have done—tremendously helping my career. Off I went into another adventure, one that would last twenty years and would be filled with turbulence, hard work, and tons of fun.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Working on this book for nearly two years, I received a lot of help from and encouragement from my friends, ex-coworkers, and my family. They taught me how to improve my writing style and bettered the accuracy of my telling. They spent countless hours reviewing several drafts and returned them with useful comments, which at the end made a huge difference in how this story came together. Thank you sincerely for all your help:

Peter Maul
, my writing coach, teacher, and friend

Karl Schlagenhof
, my friend and ex-business partner

Kurt Kolb
, my ex-coworker and friend

Molly MacDonald
, my beloved wife

Carl Gulledge
, my ex-coworker and friend

Ron Hosogi
, my ex-coworker and friend

Rich Ellings
, president, National Bureau of Asian Research, and my friend

Ben Hsu
, my ex-coworker and friend

Tyler Bramlet-Kempin
, my talented son and immensely helpful editor

Karolos Karnikis,
chairman and CEO, Vistula, and business partner

The Internet
—I could not have written this without you!

GLOSSARY

A

Acer   PC manufacturer based in Taiwan

ActiveX   Frame work designed by MS for reusable software components independent of any programming language

AG   Attorney General

AIM   Alliance formed by Apple, IBM and Motorola to create a PC standard based on the IBM Power Pc architecture

AIX   Advanced Interactive eXecutive, Name of IBM’s UNIX version

Alagem, Beny   Founder and CEO of PB

Alchin, Jim   SVP of MS responsible for the Windows development group

AMD   Advanced Micro Devices, Manufacturer of Intel like CPUs and graphic cards

Amiga   Family of computers marketed by Commodore

Amstrad   British manufacturer of consumer devices

Anglo-American   Countries governed by English common law

AOL   American Online, Internet services and media company

Apache   Distributor and developer of Linux software

API   Application programming interface, set of specifications for software programs

Apple   Manufacturer of PCs and consumer electronics

Apple II   8-bit home computer built by Apple

Application   Short for
software application
, set of computer instructions for a specific task

apps   Abbreviation for application

ARM   Advanced RISC Machine, a CPU containing a reduced instruction set for a computer

Ashton-Tate   ISV for database products, most famous one was called dBase

assembler   Low-level programming language specific to a computer system

AST   PC clone manufacturer from CA founded by Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey, and Thomas Yuen

AT   Advanced Technology, IBM designator for one of her PC models

AT&T   American Telephone and Telegraph, telephone and Internet services provider

Atari   Home computer and game-console manufacturer

Atlas V rocket   Powerful rocket delivering payload into space

Auftragstaktik   German for mission-oriented command philosophy

Austro   German, for Austrian

B

Ballmer, Steve   CEO of MS

BASIC   Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, high-level programming language

Bavaria   State located in the southeastern part of Germany

Beijing   Capital of PRC

Bell Telephone Laboratories   Former research arm of AT&T

BeOS   Multimedia OS for Mac, IBM, and PowerPCs by Be Inc.

Big Blue   Nickname for IBM

binary code   CPU instructions using only the digits 0 and 1

Bingaman, Anne   Assistant AG, head of the DOJ’s antitrust division from ’93–’97

BIOS   Basic Input/Output System, CPU instructions to manage peripheral devices

bit   Smallest unit of information for a computer system

blitz   German, lightning-fast action

blitzkrieg   German, speedy military action to obliterate an enemy