Microsoft will continue its history of filling in niches by going after Citrix Systems' dominance of concurrent Windows NT serving and Traveling Software's grip on offline Web browsing.

Citrix's WinFrame is the server software used by diskless terminals to remotely run NT from the server. Now, Microsoft has told Citrix that it plans to build the concurrent feature into future versions of NT if it fails to license Citrix's code. If successful, the move would remove WinFrame's raison d'etre at a stroke.

Separately, Microsoft has said it will build offline browsing into Internet Explorer 4.0. The market is currently controlled by Traveling Software's WebEx and ForeFront's WebWhacker.

In the past, Microsoft has obviated the disk doubling software market by putting compression into operating systems, spelling the end for Stac's Stacker package, once a huge seller.

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