[Info-vax] Out with Hurd, in with OpenVMS

[Michael Kraemer]

JF Mezei schrieb:
> Michael Kraemer wrote:
> 
> 
>>What was it again that Akers did slash and burn?
> 
> 
> Deals were almost ready to be signed to sell off many divisions at IBM
> when Gerstner got in. He VERY QUICKLY put those plans on hold and
> cancelled them.

AFAIR it was discussed to split the organisation into more
independent units, not to sell them.
Nobody would have bought e.g. the mainframe division anyway.

>>What debts? IBM had two lossy years, but otherwise still deep
>>pockets.
> 
> 
> IBM was bleeding money very fast and without action was facing bankrupcy
> very fast. Read Gerstner's book. It was in far more shape than DEC was
> when Palmer got the job.

I'd prefer a book from a person less personally involved.
IBM lost some 10% of their revenue for two or three years.
So did DEC.
But at IBM the changes in the product portfolio had already
happened: deemphasizing mainframe business, more attention
to personal computing (PS/2 and OS/2, although these didn't
succeed in the end), open systems (RS/6000 appeared three
years before Gerstner), etc. So half of the job was
already done when Gerstner stepped in.
His merits were to cut down the byzantine bureaucracy
and the individualistic behaviour of the various departments.

At DEC all that had to happen at the same time.

>>In the first place they had a problem with a changing market place
>>and external competition. 
> 
> That was from the Olsen days, refusing to consider the PC as competition.
> 
> In my opinion, Palmer quickly realised he was well above his limits 

pure speculation on your part ...

> and
> set out to find a buyer for Digital.

Five to six years from Palmer's inauguration
to that Compaq deal, that's not "quick",
it's quite an eternity during which he tried
desperately to save the company.

 > Once he found Compaq, it took him 3
> years to offload the divisions that Compaq was not interested in before
> the merger was announced.
>>DEC had way to many employees on their payroll compared to their revenue
>>(an Olsen mistake from the 1980s), so no "Casino Analysts" needed here,
>>just the usual survival strategy when times are getting tough
 >
> Cutting off the sales force when you need to increase sales isn't the
> smartest of ideas.

If the company is bleeding money at the rate DEC did there
aren't that many options left. Gerstner's IBM did the same.
I don't know whether the layoffs hit the "sales force"
in particular, but if the product lineup doesn't
match market demand, increasing the number of people
on the payroll wouldn't increase sales anyway.

>>If Olsen had left five years earlier, maybe.
>  
> No. If Digital had found a proper high calibre CEO (like IBM did), the
> problems could have been corrected, and total, Digital would have bought
> Compaq, not the other way around.

Hardly.
By the time of the deal Compaq were three times bigger than DEC.
I would assume that five years earlier Compaq was already
too big to be bought by DEC.

> The Digital Board failed big time in choosing Palmer.
> 
> I don't care for HP anymore. But their selection of a CEO will be key to
> where they go.