Suite dreams are made of this

Component software has been talked about for a long time, yet around 90 per cent of the world's businesses still run on monolithic office suites.

So is Microsoft really going to break up its Office suite, the most successful bundle of applications in history? Phil Cross, business development manager, was non-committal. "We will do what the customer wants," he said.

The real message was that these wondrous new components will be made by tools developed within Microsoft's .Net strategy. The strategy, according to ICL's director of partner technologies, Marc Silvester, will encourage componentisation by allowing diverse programs to communicate using standards like XML and Simple Object Access Protocol.

He believes it could change the entire structure of the industry within two years. Changes will start in a small way, for example with an IT manager perhaps deciding an organisation does not need a thesaurus within its office suite. The manager could broker a deal whereby the company is not charged for this function, although it could be leased on a real-time basis for occasional use.

But, as the architecture is open, the thesaurus could be bought from any number of suppliers who may be offering a better deal than Microsoft. Traditional methods of procuring software would then start to disappear in favour of leasing.

The art of brinkmanship

Such a system could open up new markets for software developers because they could compete in selling functionality on the same level as giants like Microsoft, claims Silvester. This will force IT managers to learn brokering skills and brinkmanship.

It could be seen at its best for large projects, particularly when enabling a business for ecommerce. The old monolithic approach can put IT professionals under a huge strain. "If [a system] crashes, you are not going to be flavour of the month. And it will not be easily changed to suit changing conditions," said Silvester.

The component approach means that any failures will not bring the whole edifice down, and modules can be swapped in and out to meet changing conditions. They can even be bartered, leased or sold to other companies that may have similar needs.

Alternatively, the service performed by the software may be traded. One company may hire another to do all its payments, rather than installing and maintaining its own software.

Trading will be co-ordinated by Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI), a worldwide registry of businesses backed initially by IBM, Microsoft and Ariba. The idea is that businesses will register not only their identities with UDDI but also the products and services they offer, with details of how to trade with them electronically using industry standards.

Other companies, including Compaq and Sun Microsystems, have joined the UDDI initiative and are helping to draw up the specification.

All this will require a new set of skills, said Silvester. Contract specialists will be needed to work out how software can be bartered and leased in real time, and software engineers must learn more about business. "The internet is set to become the world's largest trading floor," he warned.

What is unclear is who is going to finance and control those UDDI servers, and who is going to pay what to whom for using them. They could collapse under the complexity of what they are trying to do, but if they do take off as world trading hubs they could be well worth gambling an office suite on.

Jumping from Java

Microsoft announced a set of tools to lure Java programmers to its new C sharp (C#) language and .Net platform just days after agreeing to pay $20m to settle a three-year Java lawsuit launched by Sun.

The 'Jump to .Net' tools (Jump stands for Java user migration path), will assist the creation of XML-based services using Microsoft's Visual J Java tools and development migration.

Java code, like that of other languages such as Cobol, can be compiled into an executable running Microsoft's Intermediate Language. Unlike Java this is specific to Windows platforms. Jump and a second beta of C# are due to launch later this year.