[Info-vax] Maybe a bit OT, maybe not.. in any case an interesting article

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 5/14/2012 2:07 PM, David Froble wrote:
> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 5/13/2012 4:51 PM, David Froble wrote:
>>> Did everybody that used VMS back in the "day" really need everything VMS
>>> did for them? No, and some were always going to move to smaller and
>>> cheaper systems. Word processing and spreadsheets and such were never a
>>> good fit for VMS. But there were many good fits for VMS. Could VMS have
>>> retained more market share than they did? I for one think they could
>>> have, if they would have changed with the times and market. DEC couldn't
>>> and didn't and is no longer with us. Compaq was never an option. HP
>>> ended up with VMS, but not because they wanted it.
>>
>> One thing is the changes in technology.
>>
>> But adopting to those changes can be made elegant or clumsy.
>>
>> I think DEC/CPQ/HP could have done a lot better.
>
> DEC was basically suicidal. They tried to embrace Windoz. That was the
> competition (enemy) and MS sure didn't do a damn thing for DEC. A bad
> one way street. Bad management.

Certainly not good management.

And I consider Palmer far worse than Olsen.

>> I believe that:
>> - keeping products like RDB inhouse
>
> This might have been one of DEC's biggest mistakes. As others have found
> out, when dealing with Larry you better watch your back and be wearing
> body armor.
 >
 > A better and cheaper alternative to Oracle would have appealed to many
 > customers. They could have even ported RDB to other environments, and
 > perhaps put some nails in Larry's coffin.

:-)

>> - continue to invest in new features (successors to Spiralog,
>> Snapshot, Galaxy etc.)
>
> That as far as I know hasn't happened elsewhere to this day. I think
> some of that may have been not so good to waste money on.

????

Log based file systems are widely used today. So is snapshot technology.
And ditto with virtualization.

>> - spend some marketing dollars
>> - not have tried so hard making customers migrate
>> (ALLIN1 sales->Exchange seats maintenance, VMS only
>> being for database tier, Tru64 push and other disasters)
>> could have made DEC/CPQ/HP more money than their chosen
>> strategy.
>
> What confidence would any customer have in a company that actually
> pushed replacements for their own products? VMS is good at some things.
> Not so good at others. Thing is, VMS is good in areas that make some
> good profits. DEC didn't seem to realize this.
>
>> It would not make miracles. But looking at something like
>> i aka OS/400 sales, then it seems realistic that VMS with
>> little extra investment could have made significant money
>> for a decade more.
>
> VMS already had lots of markets. Process control. Business. No, these
> markets were not going to grow as the PC market did. So what? Do what
> you can. Instead of reinforcing themselves where they were successful,
> they chased after what they could never have.
>
> Sometimes people overlook what is right under their noses. As one
> example, the rush to Alpha. Our company's software continued to run on
> VAX long after the Alpha came out. It was enough. Codis has basically
> taken over a specific market, distributors in the small outdoor power
> equipment industry. Even today, it could run on 32 bit VAX, if newer
> systems with enough speed were available. As it is, only one of our
> larger (and frugal) customers is still running on Alpha. Consider how
> old that system is. I'm not saying that a computer architecture could
> have survived with only us as customers, nor so I think we're alone.
> This is what DEC overlooked, those who could and would use their
> existing products, if only they had continued development and availability.

I think they could have gotten customers on Alpha if there had
been enough confidence in the new platform.

Arne