The Goddess Shines on America

The summer vacation was still going on, and in just a few days, because of Caesar's arrival, the originally spacious house suddenly seemed countless times more lively. At least every morning, watching Caesar eat has become a regular program at home. Even, just to see it drinking milk, eating biscuits, and playing with everyone, the grandparents didn't miss their home in the Midlands, and lived in Culver for a long time before going back.

On the first day of August, some time after the sun had risen, Alice had just returned home from her morning jog, followed by the exhausted Oscar.

"Yo, Caesar, is this going to be eaten?"

At the dining table, Caesar was gnawing on a cookie with a contented face, while James covered his head behind the newspaper, but he couldn't see his head.

"Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo""

Seeing Alice enter the room, Caesar happily waved to her.

James put down the newspaper when he heard the sound: "Vivi, when you were out just now, Mr. Gates called home, and his tone was a little anxious. I told him that you will be back soon. How about it, hurry up and call back?"

Alice hadn't had breakfast yet, she frowned and said, "Dad, are you sure he hung up at this time?"

James shrugged: "Of course, and I heard his tone, I was really anxious. You should call back quickly, or... oh, look!"

The phone rang in the hallway, and for years the phone at home rang non-stop early in the morning, which was almost never the case. Alice gulped down the entire bowl of milk in one gulp, and walked to the corridor with a puzzled look on her face.

"Hello, Bill?"

It was indeed Gates' voice on the other side of the phone: "Alice, big business, we have a big business!"

Alice raised her eyebrows, and immediately withdrew her indifferent mood. The big business that can surprise Gates, especially during this period, must be an important event that can affect the development of Microsoft.

"Big business, does anyone want to cooperate with us?"

I only heard Gates say: "That's right! Uh...Alice, I think you should know that Microsoft and IBM have close business relations, right?"

Alice nodded clearly: "That's right, the DOS system was developed for them at the beginning, and then Microsoft just took this ride. Before I came, your annual sales of 100 million depended on it. "

"You know it very well. But now, a new business has come to our door. IBM also wants to install Windows system on its computers!"

Gates spoke in an excited tone, but Alice rolled her eyes silently.

I thought it was a big deal.

She casually leaned against the wall: "Then sell it to them, one installation disk is one hundred dollars, see how many they want."

Gates paused for a moment, and when it rang again, the original high-pitched voice was much calmer: "Oh, sorry, I didn't finish my sentence. That's right, Alice, you should know that IBM's main business area is commercial mainframe computers .So they wanted us to develop an operating system specifically for workstations, web servers, and mainframe computers!"

This time, Alice silently opened her mouth.

She understood immediately what was going on.

This time it is indeed no small matter.

"Is it a network operating system? No problem, what exactly did the other party say?"

Suppressing other thoughts first, Alice asked: "Should we develop alone or cooperate? What about the mission cycle? Of course, what I value most, how about the compensation?"

"IBM hopes to develop jointly with us, so the task cycle naturally depends on the cooperation situation. Of course, the compensation is not a problem. You can imagine how many copies we can sell for the entire IBM commercial computer system!"

What followed was a brief business meeting, but it was breakfast time after all, and Gates didn't have much to say to Alice. He hung up the phone early after making an appointment to meet in Seattle in a few days.

At this time, people had already gathered at the dining table, Sophie smiled and said, "Do you have business again?"

Alice took a deep breath and sat down at the dining table. When she picked up the knife and fork, her face was full of smiles: "IBM asked Microsoft to jointly develop an Internet operating system. What did you think of?"

Almost without hesitation, Oscar shouted, "Cisco!"

Alice nodded vigorously, Sophie and James both looked happy, and Caesar just ate his biscuits, but Hannah asked inexplicably: "Doesn't Cisco already have an IOS? Then IBM is in Do business with us?"

As soon as these words came out, even Oscar laughed, not to mention the other people at the table. Realizing that she had said something wrong, Hannah frowned in confusion and asked what was wrong.

"Stupid Hannah, IOS is for Internet hardware products, and what IBM wants is a computer operating system."

Alice laughed and waved her fingers: "Do you understand? IOS is specially used to set the parameters of routers. It is a simple program for computers. The one IBM wants is specially used for An entire computer operating system that operates large business computers, workstations, and servers, understand?"

Hannah frowned hard: "Probably...should...maybe...you almost understand it. Well, it's about making money again anyway?"

"That's right~ I'm going to make money again~"

Alice summed up the whole thing in one sentence. She knew that she would be busy again this summer vacation.

There is no doubt that the so-called operating system that IBM wants to jointly develop with Microsoft is Windows.NT.

In a short period of time, Alice was still unable to analyze why this cooperation was brought forward. It stands to reason that the development of this operating system should take a few more years, but since I have built Cisco in advance...

"Maybe that's why?"

After breakfast, I came to the bedroom, but not to go back to sleep, flipping through the many complicated documents in the book, Alice quickly sorted out some clues.

In fact, the whole situation has to be seen backwards for several months.

In general, after Cisco expanded some time ago, it has more than 40 employees and millions of yuan in liquidity. Relying on this human resources, cash resources, and the routers with fully mature designs and excellent efficiency to make products, the company's market size will of course expand. No, not long ago there was a small conspiracy of Lucent Technology.

As the well-deserved leader in the industry, Big Blue will be aware of the potential in this field and there is no doubt that it is more reasonable to want to intervene. After all, the IT industry in general is just those things, nothing more than hardware, software, mainframes, personal computers, communications, infrastructure, and so on.

In this area of ​​Silicon Valley, everyone has always had both competition and cooperation, and a hundred flowers bloom in one or more fields. Just imagine how many leaders in the IT industry want to intervene in the field of unmanned vehicles, although they each have their own main business.

"And, if it's really Windows.NT, that's definitely a key to Microsoft's take-off."

Flipping through the materials in her hand and recalling the information of her previous life, Alice immediately came to such a conclusion.

In fact, according to normal history, this cooperation broke up in the end.

At the time of the initial joint research and development, the system was called OS/2, which was divided into Microsoft-OS/2.NT of Microsoft and IBM-OS/2 of IBM. After the agreement fell through, IBM continued to provide the previous OS/2 version to the market, and Microsoft changed the name of its OS/2NT to WindowsNT, which is the first generation of WindowsNT3.1.

And when they studied separately, what Microsoft did at the time was to poach a group of people from a company called Digital Equipment and set up a special department to develop it.

And it really took a long time to develop.

Alice clearly remembered those materials. This project started around 1987, but it was already 1993 when it was launched...

In addition, there is another person who has to be said in this development activity, and that person played a crucial role.

It was a guy named David Cutler, an absolute old guy who graduated in '65 and went to DuPont and then programmed at DEC in IT. He formed a new computer series at DEC, called Prism, but unfortunately the project was eventually canceled by the company, and Cutler left DEC. And this system was the embryonic form of the later NT system.

Cutler came to work at Microsoft through a friend's introduction, and even Gates was in awe of this old man. Stern and ruthless, he regards laziness, confusion, and uncompetitiveness as his enemies. He is not only a legendary programmer, but also a great project manager.

Because the Windows-NT development took a long time, cost a lot of money, and had a large number of personnel, it can be said to be an unprecedented interpretation of software engineering.

Five years of painstaking development, costing $150 million, and a team of more than 200 members, the cost is not in vain.

You must know that looking at various terminals in the information age of later generations, and even any type of network equipment, the software part is nothing more than two aspects. One is the Internet hardware operating system, Cisco's ISO for setting router and switch parameters; the other is the operating system for the server computer itself, Microsoft's Windows.NT series.

It is not only the king of personal computer operating systems, but also the king of network computer operating systems. Microsoft's Windows has a wide layout, which naturally brings well-deserved power. Think about the Forbes power rankings of later generations, the tenth person on the list below the presidents, chairmen, and Fed chiefs of various countries, isn't that kid Bill Gates?

Therefore, after learning that Microsoft was going to develop this system with IBM, if it hadn't been controlled in time, Alice couldn't help but dance Yangko on the spot.

After all, she's still developing Cisco, isn't she?

The fourth one is finished~

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Dear friends, the fifth update is at 14:00~