[Info-vax] DECdirect, was: Re: BASIC compiler in the hobbyist distribution

[Paul Sture]

On 2015-05-29, Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
> On 2015-05-29, johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk <johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Wrt
>> "Simply having your customers call up a sales representative to buy
>> a US$100 software license and get a paper package printed and mailed
>> and then typed into some registration mechanisms just isn't
>> cost-effective for anybody involved, but I digress."
>>
>> DECdirect UK, and reportedly in Europe too, managed to do pretty
>> much that. Together with manufacturing in Ayr (Scotland) and Software
>> Supply in Galway (Ireland), they had LEAN systems before anyone even
>> knew what LEAN was. End user orders a MicroPDP/VAX one week, Ayr custom
>> build it, customer gets it the next week. Software and documentation
>> produced on demand, not from stock. 
>>
>> DECdirect UK even did outbound marketing, e.g. via the DECdirect
>> catalogues for high volume hardware and software (which looked
>> nothing like the DECdirect US catalogue, fwiw). They contained
>> articles for stuff that *could* be high volume, if people only
>> knew about it. DECdirect UK software revenue went from zero to
>> $USM100+/yr in the space of 18 months.
>>
>
> For the benefit of Hoff:
>
> http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/big/2304/DECdirect-Software-Catalogue/
>

April 1989 - "Software from the world's No. 1 in networking"

Who would have though that less than a decade later they'd be swallowed
by Compaq?

-- 
I don't know what the language of the year 2000 will look like, but I
know it will be called Fortran.                    -- Tony Hoare 1982