1986 – 1995: The Networked Enterprise

By the mid-1980s, IT professionals wanted to bring the PC into the enterprise fold, and designers were only too happy to oblige with a burst of advances in networking and client/server systems.

In 1984, LANs and minicomputers each had an installed base of less than 1 million. According to a 1988 survey published in InfoWorld, the number of LAN users grew to almost 6 million in four years, whereas the number of minicomputer users remained stagnant. New Ethernet standards developed, enhancing connectivity, and in 1995, the IEEE approved Fast Ethernet, sporting a 100Mbps, 802.3u, 100Base-T standard.

New hardware and system software debuted to make use of these networks. In 1986, IBM unveiled the RT Personal Computer high-speed workstation, the first to use RISC architecture originated by IBM. The next year, Sun Microsystems announced an alliance with AT&T to develop its Sparc/Unix platform for business workstations.

Enterprises discovered the benefits of improving communication between workers in a networked environment. Lotus Notes Release 1.0 in 1989 offered group mail, phone-book functions, and the ability to customize applications. SAP released its R/3 client/server software system in 1992.

Microsoft got the enterprise market’s undivided attention in 1995 with the release of Windows 95, offering the first Start button, a taskbar to the desktop PC, advanced file systems, networking, and a new user interface. Microsoft even paid a reported $12 million for the right to hype the OS using the Rolling Stones’ 1981 hit “Start Me Up.” But a new kind of startup was about to have a far greater impact on the world of enterprise computing.