Microsoft, where I named the missing layer in 1991 · The Graph

Organization

What this is

Jonathan Hare spent a summer placement in Building 1 and worked part-time through his second year at Stanford, in the nascent Client-Server Applications Group.

It is where he identified what he then called the Business Process Abstraction Layer — the missing coordination layer that this entire architecture eventually supplies. Thirty-five years later that is still the claim.

The record

Where this intersects the work

Each entry below carries its own provenance — the source, and how it was processed. That is the condition on which this graph can be extended by anyone without degrading.

Jonathan’s account · S-153 →Jonathan’s account · S-154 →Jonathan’s account · S-155 →Jonathan’s account · S-162 →Jonathan’s account · S-164 →Jonathan’s account · S-171 →Jonathan’s account · S-180 →

L1 · SummaryThe graphYou are here — rapid understanding, forwardable

L2 · EpisodeThe storyHis story, in his voice — ../../episodes/L3 · SourceIn his own wordsThe verbatim account — immutable, with its research context

The trail exists so that people who were there can reconstruct their own memories, recognize what they helped incubate, and add to or correct the record — or forward the few pages that belong to someone they know.

1991–92

The nucleus

Building 1 in 1991 put him alongside Jim Allchin, architect of Windows NT, under the ultimate purview of Steve Ballmer. He had one of the first copies of Remote Access Server, dialling into the Microsoft network from Stanford — which is what he was actually doing instead of attending the classes that would have made him top graduate.

Hare's accountAuthor's direct narrative — source record S-012

1991–92

The Asynchronous Communication Server team of one

Under Dwayne Walker in the Client-Server Applications Group, Hare was the only person on a team for a product Microsoft did not yet have: evaluating the asynchronous communication servers on the market, shortlisting three or four, and negotiating the embed-in-Windows deal that would make one of them the de facto standard. Server-side products ran on OS/2; the SNA Comm Server group resold IBM's.

Hare's accountAuthor's statement — source record S-180

The graph

Connected from here

There is no single root. This is one view of the graph, from this node — what you see depends on where you enter and what you are looking for.

worked alongside

Jim Allchin, architect of Windows NT, sat in the next chair

Architect of Windows NT, in the next chair

Open →under

Steve Ballmer and the Microsoft executive crucible

The executive crucible

Open →colleague

Rob Glaser went from Microsoft to found RealNetworks

Microsoft, then RealNetworks

Open →Microsoft Research

Jim Gray, Turing laureate, on transactions and what settlement requires

Transactions, and the discipline underneath settlement

Open →board member

David Marquardt, Microsoft's first outside investor, opened the door

Microsoft's board, the TOPS study, and the door into everything

Open →where it was named

I named the missing layer at Microsoft in 1991. Thirty-five years later it is still missing

Named at Microsoft in 1991. Still the claim.

Open →the group's director

Dwayne Walker ran the group I sat in at Microsoft — the Client-Server Applications Group, 1991–92

Director of the Client-Server Applications Group in the Network Business Group; Hare reported to him directly, and on a matrix line to Ballmer

Open →

Provenance

Where this came from

Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.

Primary source · S-012