[Info-vax] OT: more to success than being cheap.Value counts too.

[John Wallace]

On Jan 29, 12:55 am, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber... at comcast.net>
wrote:
> On 1/28/2012 5:25 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 1/24/2012 4:06 AM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> >> Richard B. Gilbert schrieb:
> >>> VMS is not widely used these days. Princeton University had VAXen in:
> >>> Plasma Physics Laboratory, Gas Dynamics Laboratory, Physics
> >>> Department, and the Chemistry Department. It doesn't help if the
> >>> students can't use it, or if they choose to use something else. The
> >>> University as a whole was IBM oriented. The Computing Center had an
> >>> IBM 360/91, one of eighteen or so that were made. It was what passed
> >>> for a "super computer" in those days.
>
> >> This scenario wasn't/isn't unusual for academia (uni's and bigger labs).
> >> For larger tasks one had big iron in the Computing Centre.
> >> For data taking or process control one used PDP's or, later, VAXen.
> >> So until the late 1980's there was little chance for a student
> >> *not* to be exposed to one of those DEC products. From the end
> >> of the 1980's onwards, however, Unix took over. DEC still had
> >> a good chance to ride that wave too, e.g. by migrating their
> >> large VMS base to Ultrix, while constantly improving the latter.
> >> DEC chose to blow that opportunity.
>
> > Or made OSF/1 a bigger success. Many people consider OSF/1 aka
> > DU aka Tru64 to be a lot better than Ultrix.
>
> > Note that they would still have been toast today, but Unix
> > would have given them 10-15 more years until Linux and Windows
> > would have taken over anyway.
>
> > Arne
>
> DEC's pricing was such that nearly all of its competitors could
> undersell them and nearly all of them did just that!
>
> As far as I can tell, DEC either could not or would not sell at
> the "Market Price".
>
> Suicide!  R.I.P. Digital Equipment Corp.

There's more to success than being cheap (although commercial
beancounters often fail to understand this).

Apple don't seem to be bothered by not being competitively priced but
that's been done to death and these days they don't even try to
compete seriously in the enterprise market.

As an alternative, one which is acceptable in industry, you might want
to have a look at National Instruments and their fans, and see how NI
continue to do well despite being more expensive (according to
beancounters) than many of their competitors. Quality product, price
isn't cheapest but it is good value in the bigger picture, and quality
support (that's how it seems to me anyway).