Connectivity and Emulation
There were three reasons NeXT
computers were embraced by so many high value vertical
markets like finance, medicine and research in general:
1) While the computers were relatively expensive, the
software development environment was extremely productive.
In applications where there were few deployments of
software then the hardware costs were nothing compared to
the cost of developing the application.
2) NeXT straddled the PC and the Mainframe environments
with a huge number of terminal emulators for all the
proprietary main frame terminals and PC applications. As
evidenced by the huge number of terminal emulators and
connectivity tools listed in the menu on the left, NeXT
became the rosetta stone for transferring information
amongst previously incompatible systems, as evidenced by
the number of terminal emulators with "screen scraping"
capabilities.
"Screen scraping" is an approach where the mainframe
computer has no idea it is talking to another computer. The
mainframe believes it is talking to one of it's name
branded terminals. Therefore no co-operation was required
from the keepers of the knowledge on the mainframe for the
information to be repurposed and reorganized in a more
friendly environment for manipulation and rendering... the
Next platform.
3) The first of the "emulators" became available on
NeXTSTEP. Emulating a Mac, or a PC were available on
NeXTSTEP. The company that produced SoftPC (Insignia
Solutions) was later bought by Microsoft to solve some
compatibly issues between the current and earlier OS's
Microsoft shipped.