[Info-vax] VSI has a new CEO

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-08-02, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> On 8/2/2021 8:08 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> 
>> What I was really trying to ask is how much does he know about the
>> DEC culture so that he can understand what VSI's customers might
>> expect both of him and of VSI ?
>
> The 1975 - 1995 era is not coming back.
>
> The IT world is very different today and the it seems better that the
> new CEO have the right culture for the future than of the past.
>
> He needs to have:
> - general leadership capabilities in a technology company of VSI size
> - broad understanding of the IT industry and strategic directions
> - understanding of the type of customers that use VMS today and the
>    type of customers that may switch to VMS within the next decade if
>    everything goes well
>
> VMS knowledge and DEC 35 years ago knowledge seems irrelevant.
>

That's because you are not looking at this in the right way Arne.

An excellent example is the utter disaster area that are the new licences.

Today, it seems acceptable to some people to pay for online services
and online cloud access on an ongoing basis and then lose access to
all your data if you do not keep up the payments or if there is
some loss of service disaster that you are now powerless to fix yourself.

A manager or CEO raised with only that knowledge and mindset would never
understand why this could be a problem for some people - after all
everyone they read about in their own circles is apparently doing
the same thing.

A person raised with the DEC culture would understand why the customers
would scream bloody murder if you imposed such a thing (which is exactly
what has happened with the time limited licences).

They would understand that stability and uptime are the most important
things to those customers and that it is totally unacceptable to their
customers to have systems that could fail at the end of the current
licence period if VSI goes bust.

The new VSI licences have clearly been created by people who only
understand the new online subscription model and didn't understand
why this would turn out to be such a massive problem for their
traditional DEC mission critical customer base.

DEC had a way of doing things and of selling products in a certain way
that met the requirements of their customers. If VSI wants to sell to
people raised with that culture, then they need to explain things and
sell things with that culture in mind.

To do that, they need to understand that culture.

_That_ directly impacts on VSI's profits and viability right here in 2021.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.