The Impact of the Y2K Event on the Popularity of the Pick Database Environment

At Pick’s heyday there were over 3,000 business applications available across a very wide range of hardware platforms supporting from one to thousands of real time users. The tentative economic recovery of the 90s and the Y2K fears created cautious and conservative corporate decision-making. During those tumultuous years there were startling leaps in information and communications technology rewarding those who invested in the future and in themselves. The Pick community at the time were fragmented and somewhat narrow-minded in their view of the future and were unable to collectively invest in developing new technologies. Intense marketing by ‘mainstream’ relational database vendors combined with ERP software vendors brought executive peer group pressure to adopt ‘vanilla’ relational technologies and the desire for homogeneity and perceived immunity from the impending Y2K event. A new corporate jargon was developed to further seduce executive corporate decision makers.