[Info-vax] Sounds an awful lot like DEC, and not like HP

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 30-01-2010 00:15, JF Mezei wrote:
>>> http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222500081&cid=nl_IW_btl_2010-01-29_h
>
> When Pfeiffer announcer that Compaq would buy Digital, much of the same
> arguments were made. Pfeiffer wanted to leverage the Digital assets, and
> even spoke of pushing Alpha into mainstream. There was instant
> advertising that mention VMS (not the dreaded OpenVMS).
>
> But once shareholders got antsy about no short term return on that huge
> investment, Pfeiffer was ousted. Cpmpaq ran without a leader for a
> while, and they finally gave on on finding a true leader and gave the
> CEO job to the accountant.  His first task was to call bankers to find a
> buyer.
>
> There is a big difference with Oracle. Ellison is a strong leader and he
> has good control of the company so he has time to implement his vision
> before shareholders get antsy. So the odds of him succeeding are higher.

Succeeding with what?

Because:

> However, that article mentions a focus on high end systems. From a VMS
> point of view, we all know that restricting a platform to high end
> systems means an ever dwindling customer base because the high end is
> being eroded by 8086s running some form of Unix.

Assuming that you mean x86-64's and includes Linux then: yes.

> While it may be correct to state that Oracle/Sun can't compete against
> the commodity systems from Dell/HP, what happens when he commodity
> systems from Dell/HP start to compete against Sun/Oracle ?

That when happened several years ago. I am sure that Larry do know that.

> BTW, in the same series of articles, there is one about HP.
>
> http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219400776
>
> While it is true that HP may have consolidated and slahed internal IT
> costs, this is not a common possibility in industry.  HP inherited its
> own systems, those of Compaq, Tandem and Digital. Obviously,
> consolidation was possible and relatively easy to justify since there
> would have been so much duplication.
>
> But an existing company that is not born of mergers and acquisitions
> wouldn't have all that overhead and dupolication of systems, so such
> rationalisation wouldn't happen to that level.

Most large companies has been involved in mergers and acquisitions.

A good example is Oracle. They have bought lots of companies the
last 10 years.

Arne