At the brink of the new millennium, emerging trends like globalization and the Internet—as well as the buzzword "knowledge management"— have profound impacts on how business organizations design and deploy their IT solutions. Standardization and integration seem to be the common strategy—whether ERP systems, middleware-based IS, intranets, or IT infrastructures. However, in practice these systems are often heterogeneous and constrained by various socio-technical aspects. In focusing on this phenomenon, the concept of a "horizontal information system" is introduced. Drawing from examples from a maritime classification company, we take a closer look at the phenomenon and some challenges for design and deployment of such systems are discussed.