Apple, Microsoft drive digital agenda

Zardon

INVESTING IN THE emerging digital platform, Microsoft and Apple have launched into the new year with strategies that signal what some believe represent the next wave of IT innovation.

Keynote addresses by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco on Tuesday and by Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gate at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Wednesday this week surfaced divergent approaches to the digital revolution that analysts believe will ultimately reshape the use and delivery of enterprise applications.

Jobs' message emphasized convergence and integration, whereas Gates argued emerging technologies such as SPOT (Smart Personal Object Technology) will create more outlets to transmit data to individual user silos.

Macworld launches included the Microsoft PowerPoint-compatible presentation package Keynote and Apple's own browser, Safari.

Tim Bajarin, principle analyst at Creative Strategies, in San Jose, Calif., called Keynote "Apple's way of getting more attention with the enterprise players."

Meanwhile, Apple's newly named iLife suite -- which consists of iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, and iDVD -- will retain a home-user focus.

Yet iLife brings to the forefront Apple's R&D efforts to create a deep level of integration. "There is a tremendous interaction between these applications, and yet we wrote these applications individually. We have written all new versions that are now integrated," Jobs said.

As an example of new digital platforms, the iLife suite allows users to take multimedia data from any one of the individual components and seamlessly plug it in to any other component without cumbersome import and export routines.

The concept ultimately will find its way into the enterprise space as users demand that level of integration in enterprise applications.

"As people use the Mac at home for media editing, creation, and distribution of multimedia, they will want that in the office," said Seamus McAteer, principle analyst at Zelos Group in San Francisco.

Things were different at CES, where Gates detailed SPOT, which was first announced at Comdex in November. SPOT uses the FM signal to send one-way information to small devices such as kitchen magnets.

In the first wave, the system, using the Direct Band Network, will give users access to a range of services by way of devices such as watches.

"In the future, instead of just building for the PC, [partners will] be building services that exploit the PC but also work together with the other devices," Gates said.

Not everyone is convinced the system will work. Zelos' McAteer called SPOT the rebirth of the pager. "SPOT is a dog. It is Microsoft reaching for growth," he said.

Microsoft and Apple are the only two major industry players to detail broad visions for the integration and consumption of multiple data types across a range of pervasive devices.

Companies such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard instead have focused on back-end integration efforts that meld structured and unstructured digital data that travels across multiple mobile and server environments.

"[IBM Content Manager Version 8.0] enables users to digitize and manage all forms of information ... and all kinds of audio and video formats across devices," an IBM representative said. By Ephraim Schwartz and Mark Jones