September 9, 1990

IBM CORP. and Metaphor Computer Systems of Mountain View dropped a bomb of potentially enormous magnitude on Thursday. They surprised the industry with an announcement that they’d formed a new company — not a technology exchange, not a “working relationship,” but a (rare) full partnership — to develop what’s known as “application system software” for OS/2 Presentation Manager-based personal computers and computers running various flavors of the UNIX operating system.

Operating systems, also known as system software, are like the grooves in an album that provide the interface between the record player and the needle to let you hear the music. As computers have become more sophisticated, operating systems have become more complex — more like a maze than a series of grooves — and thus increasingly unwieldy. The idea behind the IBM-Metaphor “Patriot Project,” as it’s called, is to simplify the building and use of software for today’s 32-bit computers as well as future generations.

Whenever IBM is involved in anything new around system software, the industry holds its breath. System software is the fulcrum between computer manufacturers and application developers.

Applications for any computer have to be written on top of the computer’s operating system, whether Microsoft Windows or DOS or OS/2 for IBM and compatibles, Macintosh, or UNIX. Since IBM is still the dominant force in the computer industry, anything it endorses — especially via a partnership — signals applications developers that a strong market is likely to follow.

The charter of Patriot Partners (the name of the new company) is very similar to the one embraced by researchers at Xerox PARC in the 1970s, who created an operating system and an object-oriented graphical user interface that would allow complex computing tasks to be done simply. So it’s not surprising that David Liddle, president and CEO of Metaphor and veteran of Xerox PARC during the days when the graphical user interface was being invented, will also be president and CEO of Patriot.

Working with Liddle on the project will be James Cannavino, the high-powered vice president and general manager of IBM’s Personal Systems division, and Joseph Guglielmi, vice president of IBM’s Application Solutions Division. Cannavino especially is known as one of the new guard at IBM, whose intention is to return IBM to its vanguard position in the computer business. Such a visible IBM commitment is a sign that IBM means business.

Liddle says the Patriot Project will provide the environment the applications will run in, a suite of application development capabilities — including libraries of programming code, support for multiple data types, visual programming and a structured way to access expert systems — and a consistent network interface.

Thus Patriot might actually accomplish something I’ve always thought was vital to the growth of the computer industry — a standard way to develop and use applications. Unfortunately, companies that see their products as potential standards may be thinking that the name of the new project should be “Colonial” instead of “Patriot,” since IBM’s position as industry superpower means that the smaller “countries” of the computer business either agree to be dominated or get crushed in the process.

For example, Patriot must be a shock and a deep disappointment to Steve Jobs and Next, Inc., as well as to the Open Software Foundation, a consortium of UNIX vendors. IBM “endorsed” both Next’s highly praised NextStep application development environment and the OSF’s Motif user environment for its new line of RS/6000 workstations.

But IBM will actually sell the Patriot product exclusively to its own customers, while Metaphor will sell to all other vendors, including heavyweights such as Compaq, Digital Equipment Corp. and Sun Microsystems.

Cannavino says he feels strongly that “anybody (who) compares anything that exists today with something that’s coming tomorrow is making a mistake,” referring to Jobs’ NextStep, which is already commercially available. “You can question, and you should, whether from a clean sheet of paper you can design a better environment from scratch. The world will vote on that as we get closer, but that’s some time out.”

In the meantime, industry fallout should be fascinating to watch. It’s far too early to say what it all means, or even whether the venture will be successful, but you can bet that the colonialists and the patriots will be slugging it out for the foreseeable future.