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

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Saturday, 30 May 2015 09:30:39 UTC+1, Paul Sture  wrote:
> 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

I don't know who would have seen Compaq as a purchaser, but quite
a lot of people could see that things weren't going well. Lots of 
talk from corporate HQ of being "poised for growth" while the red
ink, brown envelopes, constant re-organisations and workforce
reductions were going on in many places. 

One of the notable spots for me in the UK was when the company
decided that it's account group directors (for manufacturing,
telecom, finance, defence, etc - that title may not be the actual
one but it is close) needed to be more entrepreneurial (dynamic,
responsive, etc).

So what actually changed? On the whole the same people had the
same Account Group Director jobs, with the same organisation
around them and the same products and services in the portfolio,
but their job title was changed from Account Group Director to
"Entrepreneur". Guaranteed to work, right?

One of these days I really must have another go at reading
"DEC is dead, long live DEC" and see how well it matches what
I observed (from a long way from HQ, at least geographically).
http://www.decalumni.com/pdf/DEC_book_Press_Release.pdf