Since the start of Windows NT Magazine in September 1995, its tag
line has been "Solutions for the Next Wave of Enterprise Computing."
In 1995, that statement was ahead of its time. IS professionals were skeptical
that Windows NT would solve many problems at the enterprise level. Today,
innovative NT-based solutions are making a significant contribution in many
enterprises. This issue profiles some of those solutions and recognizes those
enterprises as NT Innovators. In addition, our columnists honor products that
significantly influenced the industry in 1997, and predict which products will
be influential in 1998. Let me give you my pick for 1997 and my prediction for
1998.
SAP
My pick for 1997 is SAP/NT. SAP's influence has been in bringing NT into the
enterprise. In fact, when a skeptic says NT can't handle the enterprise, someone usually says, "SAP ships almost half its systems on NT." That
statement usually ends the argument.
For the past 2 years, suppliers have lined up behind SAP's NT support,
adding momentum to NT's move into the enterprise. Large-scale NT-solution
vendors respect SAP's technology so much that Microsoft, Oracle, and Informix
benchmark their success in the enterprise by measuring SAP installs and
performance. HP, Compaq, Digital, IBM, and others regularly use the SAP R/3
Sales and Distribution benchmark to measure their hardware's performance.
Like many SAP customers, Microsoft is using SAP products to reengineer much
of its internal operations. SAP may even help Microsoft make good on an old
promise. I remember hearing Microsoft say it would use NT to replace its 14 IBM
AS/400s by the end of 1995. Well, it's 1998, and the AS/400s are still handling
Microsoft's business-critical operations. Microsoft's current strategy is to
replace the AS/400s with the combination of SAP products, NT, and SQL Server.
Oracle on NT
For 1997 and 1998, influential products in bringing NT into the enterprise
come from Oracle. Of all Microsoft's competitors, Oracle is the one that has
Microsoft's attention. First, Oracle is the number one multiplatform database
vendor. Oracle's share of the NT database market equals Microsoft's share with
SQL Server, and in some countries, Oracle even surpasses Microsoft in NT
database market share. For example, of the 3200 installations of SAP on NT, 70
percent are on Oracle, compared to 20 percent on SQL Server.
Oracle is influencing the NT market by bringing all of its third-party,
business-critical applications to NT. Oracle's presence in the NT market is
fueling an application development race with Microsoft. Every day, Microsoft
people motivate themselves by visiting Oracle's NT application listing
(http://ntsolutions.oracle.com/index.htm) to see whether the number of
applications is growing faster than the number on Microsoft's list
(http://www.microsoft.com/industry).
Microsoft will compete with Oracle by bundling SQL Server with other
products, including Internet Information Server (IIS) products, Small Business
Server (SBS), Systems Management Server (SMS), and CA-Unicenter TNG. Although
having SQL Server in these key areas is important, the number of business
applications that run on SQL Server or Oracle will determine the final outcome
of the database battle. Why? Within two years, people will be buying NT
primarily for application solutions rather than the technology.
The main stumbling block for Oracle is that it competes with some of its
partners. If you're a software vendor with a solution that competes with Oracle
Financials, you may want to partner with Microsoft and SQL Server.
Line-of-business applications are about the only area that Microsoft has chosen
not to compete in, so in this area, you reduce your chances of being crushed by
your development partner.
Oracle has the opportunity to seriously upstage Microsoft SQL Server in the
areas of scalability and availability. Oracle claims to have built an NT
database that scales up to eight CPUs and that their Parallel Server provides
scalability and availability in a four-cluster configuration. In addition,
Oracle plans to be first in supporting 64-bit NT. If these products live up to
Oracle's claims in 1998, Oracle can grab and hold a sizeable lead in the race
for the NT database market. The longer Oracle waits, the more opportunity
Microsoft has to play catch-up with Sphinx, SQL Server 7.0.
End of Article
