E&Y sets up an NT consultancy

Microsoft has orchestrated its third liaison with one of the big six management consultancies in its latest bid to become a corporate-wide supplier with Windows NT.

Ernst & Young's (E&Y) consultancy arm has set up a dedicated business unit, Entyron, developing enterprise-wide systems based on Microsoft's Windows NT and Back Office.

Washington-based Entyron has been set up as an advanced development centre focused on building systems to run on Windows NT.

It has announced its first global client, Votorantim Cement, part of a large Brazilian group. Entyron will support the company's supply chain and sales information system.

Management consultancies are seen as hugely influential with corporate IT buyers, and E&Y follows in the footsteps of KPMG, which set up a joint venture with Cisco and Microsoft in August 1997 to focus on enterprise systems running on NT.

Also in the same month, Andersen Consulting formed an initiative to sell and support SAP's R/3 applications suite on Windows NT.

Entyron said its decision to concentrate on Microsoft products springs from increasing client demand for NT and the belief that this growth trend will continue.

But Doug Woodward, Entyron director, admitted that the largest and most complex systems might not be suitable for NT, adding: 'NT is on a fast path for growth in both market acceptance and scalability.'

A representative at Sun Microsystems, Microsoft's arch-rival, said: 'Entyron will have difficulty offering a strong value proposition because stability, security and scalability would be a problem.' He also commented that NT is relatively immature and not as cheap as it seems if it is bought for more than 50 concurrent users.

But a representative at Compaq's Tandem unit - which offers both high-end NT and Unix systems - argued: 'Depending on how you set it up, NT can be used on a large scale and its implementation is half the cost of comparable Unix systems.

'Demand for NT is exploding and even multimillion dollar corporations like Compaq and Microsoft are running on NT,' he said.