Windows 2000 Terminal Services: An Interim Solution as Microsoft Develops Web-Based Applications?

Sun Microsystem’s intention to make the StarOffice desktop productivity suite available for free as an Internet application poses a potentially serious long-term threat to the enormous revenue Microsoft derives from Office. Although many analysts feel that StarOffice is not as capable as Microsoft Office, it has two compelling features: it is free, and it is a Web-based application that does not require an expensive personal computer. It demonstrates that applications can run on a desktop Web terminal that runs only a browser for a fraction of the cost of a PC.

Microsoft is way behind in development of Web-based applications. The only application in the Office suite that is currently available as a Web application is Outlook Web Access (OWA). Even then, the version of OWA that ships with Exchange 5.5 does not scale well; the version that will be offered with Exchange 2000 in mid-2000 will be Microsoft’s first application to be converted from Win32 to a viable Web application. (For an overview of OWA, see the Mar. 2000 Directions on Microsoft Research Report “New Exchange 2000 Architecture Shaped by the Web.”)