By Tom Inglesby

Of course, the computer industry has a tendency to produce the next giant before the current one is put to rest, and this is especially true today. Every niche has its leader and some have several battling for supremacy. The natural evolution in business says that sooner or later, the giants will eat each other (read: merge), stomp on the little bottom-feeders and then fall asleep, sated, only to awake tied to the stake of advancing technology like some ill-fated Gulliver.

Who are the gorillas today? In the world of major systems integrators, names such as EDS, Andersen Consulting, Price-Waterhouse and Deloitte & Touche stand out in certain segments and are relatively unknown in others. Where we once had "Big Eight," today we have survivors as middle-level integrators and small or mid-sized VARs and VADs (value-added resellers and value-added dealers) that form alliances and coalitions to bid on the large jobs formerly reserved for the Andersens and EDSs of the world.

Even manufacturing software companies are becoming plantwide if not household names. If you read the ads and follow the press coverage, you would come to think there are only two or three "real" players in the manufacturing software or enterprise resource planning (ERP) arena: SAP, Baan and PeopleSoft would probably be on that short list.

Have we got news for you! There are hundreds of competing system vendors in the world, some with products much better suited to what YOU need than any of the top players. One reason you may have trouble finding that "just right ERP system" is because big names attract big names as partners. Every week we hear about a new alliance partnering a top five or 10 ERP vendor with a Surviving Six consulting firm or systems integrator.

Could it be that some of these alliances lead to force-fitting inappropriate systems into companies like yours? With more of the major ERP systems being "downsized" to fit into the budgets, if not the corporate culture of middle market manufacturers, it is easier than ever to find an excuse to propose an SAP or Baan solution for a $250 million company.

Easier, but not necessarily right.

When you discuss "wants versus needs," for example, the conversation can take a strange turn. Question: What is the most requested operating system or platform for ERP today? Answer: Microsoft Windows NT.

Question: What operating system do you suggest? Answer: Microsoft Windows NT.

Question: Why? Answer: If we don't, we'll lose the business.

Question: Is Windows NT always the best choice? Answer: Long, loud laughing.

Windows NT has, apparently, become the 800-pounder in our quarter-pounder world. Few, if any, ERP vendors are ignoring NT, and most of the systems integrators are making a great effort to add NT-literate staffers as quickly as they graduate from school. It's getting to be like the NBA draft out there!

From the small owner-operated job shop with Intuit Quickbooks as its accounting system to large, multi-plant, multi-national, multi-product line conglomerates, NT is the word. If you're a manufacturing software vendor and you don't have NT in your line-up, get it quick or face extinction.

Is NT a fad or a forecast of the future?

"Now that Microsoft is bundling the Internet Information Server with NT 4.0," notes Tim Nelson, chief scientist in the Applied Technology Research division of MCI Systemhouse, "our customers are just naturally going to NT because they want to implement client/server, they want to do 'that Internet thing,' and they want to do it all with one-stop shopping. They are able to implement both NT servers and Internet servers at a lower cost (at least a perceived low cost).

Nelson continues, "We bid NT into situations because it does make the bids more competitive. We can install large, complex systems using NT servers with Intel-based hardware often at a more cost-effective rate than we can using more expensive UNIX or proprietary server technology. That's especially true on widely distributed applications where we have multiple servers in multiple locations as well as departmental applications where we don't need a big server, but we need lots of them in various departments. NT opens up that whole marketplace and allows us to be competitive. Otherwise we'd have to stick to high-end client/server applications."

But is NT now or some time in the future? "I would say Windows NT currently is a viable platform," Nelson responds. "It's a functional platform, it can be managed, and it can be deployed. We're no longer at the point in NT's life cycle where we say it's almost there. I think NT is there, and judging by Microsoft's statements it looks like they're going to continue to improve it as well."

Welcome to the New World of the 800-pound Gates-orilla.

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