Intuitive claims it alone fully exploits Microsoft .NET
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 6/1/2004 6:00:00 AM
"Intuitive has done something unique: it offers the only ERP solution in the market built completely on the Microsoft .NET platform," says John Moore, who covers enterprise services for ARC Advisory Group, Dedham, Mass. "This buys them some differentiation in the marketplace—likely 18 months worth."
Others ERP vendors employ .NET, but Intuitive and Moore both say only Intuitive has rebuilt its solutions from the ground up using the new technology.
Benefits include faster extension development, enhancement, and maintenance; fewer lines of code and therefore fewer bugs; improved connectivity and security; greater Internet utility; and lower cost of total ownership.
Intuitive recently had the opportunity to vouchsafe its speed and ease as a development environment in a competitive sale against two other vendors. All three offered similar functionality, but the customer needed a critical application that none of them yet had.
Normally, vendors work up a specification, schedule, and price—then present it to the prospect. Intuitive decided the feature was something that had wide market value, so it scheduled a demo only two days later. In the interim, the development team coded the function. When the sales team returned later that same week to demonstrate it, the deal was closed that day.
As neighbors in Washington, Intuitive says it has benefited from its close proximity to Microsoft.
"We sit on both the .NET framework and the Visual Studio .NET product advisory committees," says Intuitive President Chuck Gillam. It was in one such meeting back before Microsoft fully branded the platform that Intuitive learned about Microsoft's plans. Intuitive signed a nondisclosure agreement, was given a preview, and decided that what it had seen was not only the future of software development, but its future as well.
"We took 30 percent of our development team and created a project separate from support of the then-current product," says Gillam. "We spent about two years developing our own object model, development framework, and methods of data services using the .NET tools. It was time well invested. It has enabled us to rapidly re-architect our applications."
Early adopters are making note of the ease and speed.
"The new Intuitive .NET platform is much more robust," says Craig Cormier, senior software engineer for Anderson Power Products, Sterling, Mass. "There is a huge increase in speed. It works much better with the database, and there is much less impact on the server."
Anderson is in production on the first Intuitive .NET release, version 6.02; and is beta testing release 7.0. The company is in the process of writing XML services to support handheld devices in its warehouse, and is finding it very soft sailing.
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