A Brief History of the Pick Environment in Australia - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 155

shop on the one invoice, like with an IBM solution. There was great end user flexibil-
ity in the choices available and numerous vendors each able to supply the 'perfect
solution'. The competition was consequently brisk and in high value cases, im-
mensely pressured. The various 'Pick' vendors robustly vied with each other for the
prize of the Operating System licence that was often tied to a hardware platform be-
cause of the limited ports made by that vendor.
The other edge of the sword was that when errors or difficulties arose it was often
difficult to identify the culprit - hardware, operating system, DBMS, 4GL or applica-
tions software and it was not uncommon for each to blame the other.
As the Y2K event approached, the 'mainstream' RDBMS community was mount-
ing a major marketing campaign guaranteeing Y2K compliance and promising many
years of trouble-free use with their “best of breed” and “world's best practice” prod-
ucts. This idea appealed to many “C” level executives and a lot of organisations who
were struggling with COBOL, RPGII and PL/1-based systems elected to adopt typi-
cally SAP or Oracle solutions.
There was comfort in conforming to peer group pressure that was vigorously sup-
ported by so many seemingly knowledgeable people in so many forums. After all, if
everyone was going that way then surely everyone can't be wrong?

3.10 What Changed?

On Saturday January 1 st 2000 the world did not end, electricity kept coming out of
power points, water flowed as did gas. The IT community rejoiced in their collective
wisdom and ability to prevent the disasters that were predicted. However, a number of
important new influences or orthodoxies had emerged and had taken root…

• Alignment between cost and value and quality

• The acceptance of products such as Oracle and SAP and their million dollar

price tags by financial controllers seeking Y2K immunity

• How can something costing $150k be possibly as good as something costing

$1.5m?

• Microsoft establishes universal acceptability of faulty software

• The now infamous EULA states unequivocally that the software you have

bought is not guaranteed to work…

• A new corporate jargon emerges

• Multi-million dollar applications from Europe and the USA with labels such

“best of breed”, “world's best practice” and “enterprise class”

• Would you be brave enough to argue against a product solution that was “ac-

knowledged the best of breed” for your industry sector?

• Decision making on IT acquisitions went from the IT people to the accountants

• Accountants who have now been liberated from their IT departments are now

calling the shots on high value IT decisions

• There is a growing atmosphere of suspicion about the justifiability of the

huge Y2K expenditures [32]

• The Windows GUI is the only practical user interface to a computer

• The Internet (and TCP/IP) is now the accepted data communications orthodoxy

• Safety in numbers