But growth will certainly continue. Moreover, Windows NT is hot in the financial applications market. Financial applications providers anticipate tremendous growth in the Windows NT arena. Flexible Finances Windows NT's popularity is rooted in the flexibility and power it offers finance departments, which may need to run processing-intensive applications in heterogeneous environments, says Matt Davis, accounting industry marketing manager for Microsoft's industry sales and marketing organization. Early electronic finance applications were typically inflexible, causing IS managers to insist that policies and procedures be shaped and constrained by systems requirements.
Companies strive to do more with less, and focus on best practices.
Re-engineering a finance department's activities requires the support of a flexible platform, Davis says, which offers a solid transaction engine, a strong and flexible process engine, and a good reporting engine. With these features, IS managers can work with finance departments to automate financial processes to meet best practices criteria. Once the platform is accepted by the IS and finance departments as a necessary step in re-engineering its practices, the IS manager overcomes a critical hurdle in integrating Windows NT into the information systems mix. Next may come the decision regarding how to structure the platform's components within the finance department. Many prospective buyers are attracted by the seamlessness of deploying Windows NT Server on the back end and some version of Windows on the desktop.