[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[Bob Koehler]

In article <hdaikk$h0f$03$1 at news.t-online.com>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer at gsi.de> writes:

> It seems to me that going MIPS,
> though technically, economically and "politically"
> sensible (as Mr. Bell himself has stated),
> did not please the egos of some of DECs techies.
> So Alpha was started, but it came so late
> and was so overambitious
> that it contributed to the demise of the company.

   It was always clear to me that going to MIPS was a stopgap strategy
   to keep DEC from loosing the business to RISC/UNIX when VAXen
   fell off the bottom of the price/performance curve.

   DEC was a software company that thought it was still a hardware
   company but clearly knew that VMS was a major source of revenue
   and the center of its growing software portfolio,and would not 
   readily port to MIPS.
   
   Coming out with Alpha after loosing the business to RISC/UNIX did
   not turn out to be a workable business strategy.