InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology
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December 20/27, 1999

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1999 Product Of The Year
Most Important Products Of The '90s

Products Of The Year:
  • Broadvision One-To-One

  • CacheFlow's Web-Caching System

  • Red Hat Linux 6.1

  • Novell Directory Services B

  • Oracle8i

  • Network-Based Procurement Services

  • i2 Technologies' Rhythm

  • Siebel 99

  • Four-Way Enterprise Servers

  • Extensible Markup Language

  • Hardware Renaissance

  • Most Important Products of the '90s

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    The 1990s was a decade of rapid technological advances. Client-server architecture evolved into a viable alternative to mainframe computing. Enterprise applications such as groupware, inventory control, supply chain, and systems management emerged as platforms for the evolution of business systems. The PC became a ubiquitous and increasingly powerful desktop tool. And the Internet was embraced as a communication medium, consumer platform, and business conduit. There were also some spectacular failures--remember object-relational technology? Ignoring such one-hit wonders, here are 10 of the most important and influential products introduced in this decade.

  • Sun Microsystems' Java. The brave little embedded operating system started out as a platform for write-once-run-anywhere computing and ended up as the Web's favorite tool.

  • Netscape Navigator. There's probably no greater development in the history of IT than the emergence of the Internet and World Wide Web. By the time Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark launched their graphical Web browser, Navigator 1.0, in 1994, there were more than 1 million Internet hosts. While Mosaic was the first widely distributed browser, Navigator set the standard in terms of look and functionality. And in the process, it shook Microsoft to its core--no small feat.

  • Lotus Notes. Lotus Development Corp. licensed Notes, the product most commonly associated with the term groupware, from Iris Associates in 1989. By the time IBM bought Lotus in 1995 for $3.5 billion--primarily to acquire the groupware technology--Notes had an installed base of almost 2 million seats. Lotus made a successful effort to integrate Notes with the Internet when it introduced Domino in 1996.

  • Microsoft Office. Microsoft didn't come up with the idea to bundle a spreadsheet, word processor, and graphics package into a productivity suite, but it made the most of the concept--and created a business computing standard. Microsoft has continued to enhance the bundle, including links to the Internet.

  • Oracle's relational database. The original work on relational database technology was done by Edgar Codd when he was at IBM in the early 1970s. However, Oracle took the relational model and established it as a database standard, through both rapid technological advance and aggressive marketing. In the 1990s, Oracle continued to enhance the basic architecture to incorporate symmetric multiprocessing and object extensions.

  • Sun Microsystems' Enterprise 10000 server. Sun made believers out of many of those who had been skeptical about the scalability of multiprocessing servers when it shipped the 64-node E-10000 in May 1997.

  • SAP R/3. The third version of SAP's suite of enterprise applications, introduced in 1992, integrated and automated back-office systems and convinced many companies to reengineer their business processes to accommodate the software.

  • Computer Associates' Unicenter. Introduced in 1993, CA's systems-management software unified a disparate set of products and processes, and provided a comprehensive view of IT systems. CA continued to strengthen the product with the introduction of the graphical, object-oriented TNG version in 1997 and the three-dimensional TND version in 1998.

  • Intel's x86 architecture. Intel led the PC industry on a price/performance curve that mirrored Moore's Law--and then some. When Intel launched the 66-MHz Pentium processor in 1993, it set the stage for a quantum leap in desktop processing, making possible powerful personal productivity applications--and eventually online commerce.

  • Microsoft Windows. In the spring of 1990, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates introduced the latest iteration of the company's graphical front end, Windows 3.1--and it was an instant hit with the public. Since then, billions of copies of the operating system have been sold, and, along with its siblings, Windows NT and Windows CE, Windows has proved to be one of the highest-impact products in IT.

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