Software Quarterly

1994 Turns Out To Be OS/2's Year

by Amy Wohl

Amy Wohl is president of Wohl Associates, an information technology consulting firm based in Bala Cynwyd, Penn. She is a frequent contributor to industry publications.


Operating systems are not like application programs. It isn't enough for them to be technologically appealing or to contain a particular feature that is user seductive. Because we buy them to run our computers -- to provide the nearly invisible, but very important plumbing that will determine the success of all our computing endeavors -- a whole, additional set of standards bedevils our decision.

We have to worry not just whether the operating system itself is easy to use (hopefully we won't see much of it), but what effect it has in making the applications we intend to use easier (or harder) to get at and combine. We need to look carefully to see what kind of a computing environment it invokes, both the graphical user interface and the technical underpinnings. How many things can I open at once? What combinations are possible? How safe (from data loss) is it all? What kind of systems management is built into the operating system? How much more is available from third-party products? How does this operating system relate to the other products I'm using now or intend to use in the future?

OS/2 has always been amazingly good at most of these. In fact, the main problem with OS/2 was that it suffered from its somewhat untidy past. Like many operating systems, that past is littered with promises that took longer to meet than expected and the need to optimize the operating system several times before it could both perform well and fit on a reasonably sized machine.

Perhaps it is simply that the market has grown up to the point where OS/2 now looks like a much better proposition than it did when customers first saw it and said, "Too big! Too complex!" For customers who are now comparing OS/2 not to DOS and Windows, but to NT and UNIX as a server operating system, it is clear that OS/2 is often the operating system of choice.

A great deal of that has to do with software. (We can probably agree that without software, operating systems aren't very interesting.) Much mainstream server software arrives on OS/2 first; much existing software was designed for the platform. Many popular packages with huge numbers of users and strong commitments to OS/2 -- like Lotus Notes -- will take years to offer similarly featured versions of their product in other environments like NT.

Many large organizations prefer OS/2 as an application development platform, selecting it for its robustness and for its fit (via tools, systems management, connections, and cross-platform applications like database). They may choose to extend their own OS/2 desktop application environment with OS/2 applications from vendors like Lotus and Computer Associates (who have specifically focused on the OS/2 customer).

Another option is to mix-and-match, selecting from the broader software market. A significant strength of OS/2's desktop interface is its ability to permit DOS, Windows (multiple versions), and OS/2 (multiple versions) applications to be simultaneously supported. This means users can continue to use existing commercial and in- house applications and can choose any Windows application to run within the OS/2 environment. IBM's Windows support under OS/2 has received praise because it is much broader than schemes that support only selected products (such as WABI) and offers higher performance than the emulation scheme used on the new PowerMacintosh.

Even individual users of Windows applications may find OS/2 a better environment, since it offers more robust support for running multiple applications and supports different types of applications better. IBM offers a special version of OS/2 that loads directly on top of a Windows environment for such users -- and its greater- than-expected success in the marketplace is an indication of customer interest.

The best news about OS/2 is that it's being improved. Soon, elements from Taligent's object oriented (OO) application environment will be injected into OS/2, providing new benefits to OS/2 users and moving OS/2 closer to the day when it will ultimately run a Taligent personality. But multiple-personality OO operating systems are still in the future. An enriched OS/2 is just around the corner, and that is sure to keep current users interested, as well as attract new users to the platform.

Will there be competition from new operating systems like NT? Of course. But new operating systems can take time to get going (as OS/2 can certainly testify) and OS/2's time is now.





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