In October 1991, Intergraph began looking for an open platform that
could help the company reach beyond its existing audience of UNIX customers. As
one of the world's largest developers of CAD software, Intergraph unanimously
embraced Windows NT, which was just coming into existence, because it combined
the popular look and feel of Windows with a system robust enough to handle the
company's technical applications. Intergraph made the UNIX-to-NT migration on
three levels: Software developers, hardware resellers, and users all played a part
in making the migration work.
Intergraph began the migration by moving its technical software
applications from UNIX to NT and converting its hardware platform to the Intel
microprocessor running NT. At the same time, the company began migrating its
corporate business applications to NT. So, Intergraph has been on both sides of
the NT migration storythe company was converting its products and replacing its
corporate business platform.
Several factors influenced Intergraph's decision to develop software on the
Windows platform. The company had found a market for selling its RISC-based
Clipper workstations with UNIX applications, but it needed to broaden its
audience to grow its business. Intergraph didn't consider going to another UNIX
platform such as HP-UX, IRIX, or Solaris because of the amount of work involved
to port its programs to these platforms. Intergraph also knew that even if the
company ported its applications to all these platforms, the market still
wouldn't be big enough for Intergraph to pursue.
About the time Intergraph began looking at new markets, Intel introduced
the 486 chipa fast, inexpensive processor that did acceptable floating
point operations and offered the performance required for technical graphic
applications. Intel's low price point let 486-based machines easily enter new
markets. Many vendors, including Intergraph, offered Intel-based machines, and
Intergraph realized that the hardware platform was the key to extending the
company's reach to a broader audience than it reached with its UNIX-based
machines.
From a software developer's standpoint, Intergraph knew it had to develop
programs to run on a Windows-based platform because Microsoft was so pervasive
on the desktop. Intergraph turned to NT because it provided the popular Windows
user interface, 32-bit addressing, and other functionality that Intergraph
required for its mission-critical applications. Intergraph no longer faced the
question of whether to move to NT, but rather of how to move to
NT.
Intergraph's vision was to move to an open platform, to make use of all the
capabilities within that platform, and to concentrate specifically on the
company's core competencies. The first step was to minimize the amount of code
development so that Intergraph could get on NT as quickly as possible.
Intergraph had more than 100 million lines of UNIX code (at least half of this
amount was user interface-related code). The company adapted this code to run on
NT. Unlike developing for UNIX, Intergraph realized that it didn't need to add
capabilities such as its proprietary Object Manager (OM) to NT. For example, NT
has an outstanding object system with Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) and
component object model (COM) and an excellent 2D and 3D graphics system.
Five years ago, most of Intergraph's revenue came from UNIX applications
running on Clipper machines. Last year, 79 percent of the company's revenue came
from sales of Windows and DOS applications running on Intel-based platforms.
Intergraph has completed the hardware move to Intel and is performing all new
development with Intel processors. All new Intergraph machines ship with NT.
Intergraph is also helping customers who migrate to NT by addressing the
issue of getting the new applications to work with old applications or replacing
the old software. Intergraph has created its AccessNFS Solutions family of
interoperability products to help with the migration process.
Intergraph's corporate NT conversion took place hand in hand with its
product conversion. The company purchased new hardware for every employee and
retrained everyone on new software tools such as Microsoft Office and PC-based
email. Throughout the migration, Intergraph learned that the hardware costs,
although substantial, are probably less of a consideration than purchasing new
software, retraining personnel, and restructuring support functions.
Along the way, Intergraph learned a few things about migrating to a new
operating system. Intergraph felt comfortable with its decision to move to a
Windows-based platform because the operating system is pervasive and provides a
good base for software development. Ultimately, these features mean that
Intergraph can protect its customers' futureopen platforms with persistent
software architectures and supporting client/server designs (including Web-based
designs) are key to providing what customers need.
Intergraph ultimately sees the issue of whether to migrate to NT as a cost
of doing business. Can companies afford not to move to NT? Companies that don't
migrate might be left behind.