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

[Michael Kraemer]

JF Mezei schrieb:

> Personally, even back then, customers wsere demanding more competitive
> pricing and demanding DEC start to compete against Microsoft instead of
> just focusing on high end stuff. People has also been demanding more
> "industry standard" stuff (aka: disks, memory available from 3rd
> parties). Digital eventually did the 3rd one, but not the first 2.

Under Palmer things got better, pricing was more in sync
with the RISC competition. Beating Wintel stuff on price
would have been pretty hard in the long run, that's
something the competition didn't achieve either,
with the possible exception of Apple as long as they were
on PPC.

> I am quite confident that if the CEO of Digital had demanded of his
> troups to start making affordable/competitive equipment that is not
> crippled in any way, that they would have come through with flying colours.

That's wishful thinking.
Alpha simply came three years too late,
and even when it eventually appeared,
its ecosystem (OSF/1,VMS) needed yet more years to play catchup.

> The problem with Digital is that it had some loyal and rich customers
> willing to pay IBM pricing, and Digital was not willing to make the leap
> of faith between high-margin-low-volume to low-margin-high-volume.

Palmer tried that and failed.
DEC tried twice to enter the PC market with Alpha boxes,
and also tried to enter the embedded market.

> DEC was squeezed out of existance by IBM at high end, and the rest of
> the world at the low end.
> 
> 
> Competition is a weird thing: it drives profit margins down. If you are
> unwilling to compete you are put out of the market. If you are willing
> to compete, your profits go down but you survive.