Viewpoint

System companies are standardizing their EDA on Windows NT. The question is whose products they'll choose. The EDA Market Reformation: Not If but When by Jim Plymale

I can remember when the prospect of widespread adoption of EDA on Windows NT seemed like a distant prophecy, similar to the skeptical reception Unix workstation­based EDA experienced before it replaced minicomputer-based EDA. But now it seems there's been an industrywide awakening.

The early believers were the arguably optimistic industry analysts and the PC-based EDA vendors. Next, visionary engineers within large companies began to purchase and use products for Windows NT and share their experiences with others. Then, traditional Unix-based EDA vendors voiced their half-hearted belief, dedicating small (by their standards) "pilot teams" to evaluate the technology. Some acquired entrepreneurial start-ups to develop Windows NT products. Recently, technology giant Intel created a stir when it announced its shift to a corporate EDA strategy based on Windows NT. Even Unix workstation vendors Hewlett-Packard and IBM are signaling that their hardware businesses will shift to Windows NT. Suddenly, everyone except those in the corner offices of an ever diminishing list of workstation companies believes in the imminent fulfillment of the Windows NT prophecy.

Now it's no longer a discussion of if the shift to Windows NT will occur, but when. The unresolved question among system companies is which products they'll standardize on. It's reasonably certain, based on history, that the majority of the market, the "mainstream," will move only when they believe a safe haven exists that can meet their needs.

The traditional Unix EDA vendors have tried to convince mainstream companies that they're best positioned to satisfy those needs. To do that, they appear to have adopted a two-pronged strategy: porting software from Unix to Windows NT and acquiring products from forward-thinking EDA companies. Clearly, based on the current revenues those companies are deriving from Windows NT (none of the top three EDA vendors has Windows NT-based revenues that exceed 10 percent of overall revenues), their customers haven't voted for them with their checkbooks.

Perhaps the reason is that the market has matured sufficiently to understand that the EDA start-ups who bet their businesses on Windows NT four and five years ago may now have an advantage. And maybe those same companies who've been developing and supporting products on the Windows platform may actually be able to service them better. Also, maybe it's entirely possible that those same companies can deliver a superior value because of their innovative business models, which use the advances in computing and communications to lower the costs of selling to and servicing their customers.

On the other hand, maybe customers aren't satisfied that even though the cost of maintaining and supporting a Windows NT-based platform is roughly half the cost of maintaining a similar Unix-based system, often they still have to pay the same high price for EDA software on Windows NT. After all, these customers have been forced by the markets they serve to continually innovate, lower costs, and improve productivity. Shouldn't they expect the same from their EDA vendors?

Time will tell, and the customers will be the final judges. Those who satisfy them will end up the big winners as the industry goes through its next major platform shift. Those who don't probably won't have enough of their original staff around to remember why they ignored the prophecy. *

Jim Plymale is the vice president of marketing at OrCAD Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.).

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integrated system design  October 1997