Intergraph Maps Out Its Future with NT

In October 1991, Intergraph began looking for an open platform thatcould help the company reach beyond its existing audience of UNIX customers. Asone of the world's largest developers of CAD software, Intergraph unanimouslyembraced Windows NT, which was just coming into existence, because it combinedthe popular look and feel of Windows with a system robust enough to handle thecompany's technical applications. Intergraph made the UNIX-to-NT migration onthree levels: Software developers, hardware resellers, and users all played a partin making the migration work.

Intergraph began the migration by moving its technical softwareapplications from UNIX to NT and converting its hardware platform to the Intelmicroprocessor running NT. At the same time, the company began migrating itscorporate business applications to NT. So, Intergraph has been on both sides ofthe NT migration story­the company was converting its products and replacing itscorporate business platform.

Several factors influenced Intergraph's decision to develop software on theWindows platform. The company had found a market for selling its RISC-basedClipper workstations with UNIX applications, but it needed to broaden itsaudience to grow its business. Intergraph didn't consider going to another UNIXplatform such as HP-UX, IRIX, or Solaris because of the amount of work involvedto port its programs to these platforms. Intergraph also knew that even if thecompany ported its applications to all these platforms, the market stillwouldn't be big enough for Intergraph to pursue.

About the time Intergraph began looking at new markets, Intel introducedthe 486 chip­a fast, inexpensive processor that did acceptable floatingpoint operations and offered the performance required for technical graphicapplications. Intel's low price point let 486-based machines easily enter newmarkets. Many vendors, including Intergraph, offered Intel-based machines, andIntergraph realized that the hardware platform was the key to extending thecompany's reach to a broader audience than it reached with its UNIX-basedmachines.

From a software developer's standpoint, Intergraph knew it had to developprograms to run on a Windows-based platform because Microsoft was so pervasiveon the desktop. Intergraph turned to NT because it provided the popular Windowsuser interface, 32-bit addressing, and other functionality that Intergraphrequired for its mission-critical applications. Intergraph no longer faced thequestion of whether to move to NT, but rather of how to move toNT.

Intergraph's vision was to move to an open platform, to make use of all thecapabilities within that platform, and to concentrate specifically on thecompany's core competencies. The first step was to minimize the amount of codedevelopment 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 thisamount was user interface-related code). The company adapted this code to run onNT. Unlike developing for UNIX, Intergraph realized that it didn't need to addcapabilities such as its proprietary Object Manager (OM) to NT. For example, NThas an outstanding object system with Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) andcomponent object model (COM) and an excellent 2D and 3D graphics system.

Five years ago, most of Intergraph's revenue came from UNIX applicationsrunning on Clipper machines. Last year, 79 percent of the company's revenue camefrom sales of Windows and DOS applications running on Intel-based platforms.Intergraph has completed the hardware move to Intel and is performing all newdevelopment with Intel processors. All new Intergraph machines ship with NT.

Intergraph is also helping customers who migrate to NT by addressing theissue of getting the new applications to work with old applications or replacingthe old software. Intergraph has created its AccessNFS Solutions family ofinteroperability products to help with the migration process.

Intergraph's corporate NT conversion took place hand in hand with itsproduct conversion. The company purchased new hardware for every employee andretrained everyone on new software tools such as Microsoft Office and PC-basedemail. Throughout the migration, Intergraph learned that the hardware costs,although substantial, are probably less of a consideration than purchasing newsoftware, retraining personnel, and restructuring support functions.

Along the way, Intergraph learned a few things about migrating to a newoperating system. Intergraph felt comfortable with its decision to move to aWindows-based platform because the operating system is pervasive and provides agood base for software development. Ultimately, these features mean thatIntergraph can protect its customers' future­open platforms with persistentsoftware architectures and supporting client/server designs (including Web-baseddesigns) are key to providing what customers need.

Intergraph ultimately sees the issue of whether to migrate to NT as a costof doing business. Can companies afford not to move to NT? Companies that don'tmigrate might be left behind.