Of course there were other solutions than PC based ones. I worked for IBM 1996-2001. I have first hand experience from how IBM was panicking over that whatever Microsoft took on, they seemed to turn to great successes.
The point is that thousands and thousands of companies were big enough to greatly benefit from digitizing their financial processes but way too small to afford a IBM based solution.
That was an big market that IBM failed to get a grip on and something that Microsoft just skillfully gobbled up.
So no Linux based systems at that time? Good.
Of course there were other solutions than PC based ones. I worked for IBM 1996-2001. I have first hand experience from how IBM was panicking over that whatever Microsoft took on, they seemed to turn to great successes.
The point is that thousands and thousands of companies were big enough to greatly benefit from digitizing their financial processes but way too small to afford a IBM based solution.
That was an big market that IBM failed to get a grip on and something that Microsoft just skillfully gobbled up.