Conference 7.286::digital

    re.- 100% agree
    	 see also on MR4SRV::DEC_HISTORY note 232.*
    

    RE .0  
    
     We did have our brightest and best technical people there!
    
      Unfortunatly they work for other companies now :^)
    
      (Just kidding Mr. Palmer)
    Bill-

    .0

>We should have had our best and brightest technical experts there

    I can assure you that this is the first time I heard of this.

    No one has told me about this, I'would have been more than happy 
    to go and help in any way I know how.

    now, may be we in DEC still think that our products should sell itself?

    In Saturn they do that too! I hear you go to a Saturn show case 
    room, and there ain't no sales'pepole around, and Saturn cars are selling
    well, I hear, so may be this is the idea we are trying to implement?

    /nasser

    
    
    -1 Nasser....NOT!  Saturn's competition is foreign autos who have been
    making quality products for decades, unlike the domestic manufacturers.
    If you want to buy quality (semi-quality) and domestic, Saturn is it...
    at least for a while.
    
    Alpha's competition is high quality, high performance and comes from
    domestic, foreign and halfway inbetweens.  Isn't the "build it and they
    will come philosophy what helped to get us into the jam in the first
    place??????  
    
    [Maybe that was a tongue-in-cheek note and I missed it...}-|?]
    
    

    I too recently attended an industry conference and was too embarrassed to
    have my customers attend the DEC booth.
    
    Although ALPHA was the main focus it was presented in a
    drab, boring unexciting presentation done on b&w overheads.  This is
    while vendors all around us were doing multi-media demos and presentations. 
    Customers were expected to sit through this presentation for a
    half-hour in order to register to "win" an ALPHA Architecture
    handbook(which is available free from our literature rooms).
    
    If you watched our DNV announcement on Nov 10th with customers, as I
    did, I was again embarrased by the lack of enthusiasm by our
    presenters.  Where are the marketing people?  If a VP can't present,
    don't have him make an important announcement like this.  And how can
    we thank our creative folks for the non-discript ALPHA logo and AXP
    designation?
    
    We're having a hard enough time convincing customer that this is the
    greatest thing we've done in 15 years without our marketing splashes
    being duds.  
    
    Let's get our act together...KC

    On the Tuesday evening addition of CNBC's business news they heralded
    SUN and HP announcements for their products.  Results of the SUN/HP
    announcements were that their stocks went up and ours went down.  The
    investment community speaketh! The DEC announcement, it 
    was said, is the companies most important and that managment was not
    very exciting.  Of course why would you want to be exciting since we
    do not really have any software to run on the Gunis world's record
    computer chip.
    
    I spent an entire day on Monday in ALPHA readiness training learning
    tactics to hold off the competition until DEC OSF/1 and WINDOWS-NT 
    are available.  We should be charged about ALPHA.  Every presentation
    and piece of literature should portry that ALPHA AXP is the new DEC.
    You only make a first impression once, and I fear that the impression
    made on Tuesday is that ALPHA AXP is really not quite yet ready!
    

 
Re: .5   (finally got the reference right)
  
 >  If you watched our DNV announcement on Nov 10th with customers, as I
 >  did, I was again embarrased by the lack of enthusiasm by our
 >  presenters.  Where are the marketing people?  If a VP can't present,
 >  don't have him make an important announcement like this.  And how can
 >  we thank our creative folks for the non-discript ALPHA logo and AXP
 >   designation?

 Give us a break. . . .please!  How do you expect our best people to be
 in two places at once!  Given the choice, would YOU choose AutoFact 
 (Detroit) over Hawaii.  Didn't think so. :-)

 $set /sarcasm=off

    
    just wondering?
    
    if a customer asked you "why should i buy alpha from digital
    rather than as400's from ibm, or sparc10's from sun, or 7000's
    from h.p.?" what would you say?
    
    are we spending too much time again talking to each other?
    still drinking our own bath water?
    
    alpha may be the hotest chip in guiness and dec's future,
    but what are the best 3 reason's that a _business_ person
    would have for buying an alpha system from dec?
    
    if the answer takes 107 slides, like the marketing stuff i
    recently received, then don't expect the prospect to be 
    waiting around when you're finished.
    
    no sarcasm - serious question.
    
    jim-who's-still-waiting-for-dec-to-hire-a-marketing-person. 
    

    At least Digital had a booth in Detroit. Just a few weeks ago there was
    an annual computer show held here in Houston. The 'Strictly Business
    Computer Expo' had its own section in the Sunday paper complete with
    ads from lots of the vendors that would be there. Checking the map
    showed that one Digital Equipment Corporation would have a booth there.
    
    Either it was miniscule or invisible. I took two trips through the
    entire place just to be sure. Nope, no DEC booth to be seen. HP, IBM
    and Apple had huge areas set up, as did lots of other vendors including
    Microsoft who must have had 10 folks answering questions at their
    booth.
    
    Not to worry, Houston's just a little place, only 4 million or so
    people. I'm sure not many of them wanted to buy a computer anyway. :-(
    
    Harry
    

    >jim-who's-still-waiting-for-dec-to-hire-a-marketing-person. 
    
    hey, DEC spent a lot of good money in the last decade moving excellent
    sales people from the field into marketing.  Are you saying they wasted
    the money?  ;)
    
    to bad DEC couldn't sell TTB and MRO for what they paid for the
    contents.

    It's extremely unfortunate that the sum of the experiences with our
    Alpha product would be - in a word - dismal.  Can other's comment on
    their experiences.   Good and Bad.
    
    Phil                              

    
    Re: .11
    
    >Hey, DEC spent a lot of good money in the last decade moving excellent
    >sales people from the field into marketing. Are you saying they wasted
    >the money?
    
    Yes, or maybe they wasted the money training/moving those people. 
    I also know they spent a LOT of good money migrating engineers to
    the field (TOD- Tech Oportunity Days - Boy what an oportunity) Almost
    ALL I know from that program were let go, unrelated to performance...
    
    One person was given over 6 mo of UNIX?ULTRIX/OSF/SCO... UNIX training
    and then 'let go' but we CONTINUE to hire UNIX talent OUTSIDE... This
    person was one of very few (~20ish) I think they called them UNIX
    WIZARDS and THAT training was VERY expensive, not to mention probably
    external... Who can figure... Is anyone TRYING to figure...
    
    I don't understand the trade shows and our lack of enthusiastic, all-
    out marketing... I guess it's the moral everywhere, people are the
    walking dead and it's NOT the same,fun,exciting DEC but people if
    we CAN'T get Excited over ALPHA... Who are the marketing Managers or
    VPs OVERSEEING these events... WHAT are they doing... Don't they make
    sure BIG EVENTS are properly run, running smoothly..etc... EARNING
    ther BIG BUCKs...
    
    And how about the the advance warning of the Tuesday announcement that
    gave HP/SUN the oportunity to upstage us... REAL SMART... It's
    scarey... like nobody's at the helm... (and Bob P can't do it ALL, but
    he can roll some marketing/sales heads...) Sad because many/most of the
    rank-and-file ARE TRYING to DO THEIR BEST... 
    
    I have been completly unimpressed/discusted with what appeared to be a
    'ho hum' here we are people... ALL news reports were mediocre at best
    that reported on the ALPHA announcement, WHAT A SHAME...
    
    I hope Bob READS THIS NOTESFILE...
    
       'in disbelief...'

Greetings,

I know this note could get me in trouble but, I'm kind of excited
about the future and Alpha. For the last year I've seen nothing
but HP and Sun boxes outside our customer's offices. They are interested
in something that we sell!

The ability of this thing to have good price/performance numbers
will eventually win out with this site where I work. Concerning
bad marketing etc, these people that are interested in the Alpha 
don't pay much attention to anything but numbers and performance.
They rarely pay much attention to what we have to say. They load
the software and watch it run. If they price is right they'll buy.
You could talk nice to them, get them drunk or take them to lunch
and it wouldn't do any good. 

If I had one thing to add however is some nice documents to hand out.

Sorry for appearing positive here, you may go back to complaining
with my compliments,

Fred Mudgett

    Well its rather unfortunate that you would feel like getting in trouble
    for saying something goood!.
    
    I'd like to be optmistic too, but/and I want to suggest some problems
    so that ALPHA program can address. I read the article in the Globe on
    Wed following the announcement, not bad, pretty good but the end of the
    article said, eventually there will be 2000 applications up from the
    current number of 20.
    
    20!
    
    Well, look, at Stage 2 ship time and Stage 3 ship time, we better have
    some announcements that keep upping that number! 20 looks bad now to
    people, who knows what they must think. Gee nice, box lets consider
    buying, oh look 20 applications, not very much.
    
    However we have various porting stages and they are increasing the
    numbers, it would be nice to show them going up and fast. And on this
    subject I hope the ALPHA program will tell Bob Palmer and.or others
    that it is rather critical that high priorities for LP groups is that
    they take advantage of the good porting tools, such as DECmigrate to
    point out the porting issues and uise the cross tools to get alot of
    stuff ported fast. Since we are currently losing 3 million dollars a
    day, its important to make the platform viable and with applications.
    
    There are many products that also could potentially be DECmigrated if
    the binary conversion rate has gotten closer to 100% conversion; It has
    made alot of progress.
    
    Perhaps the ALPHA program can assmeble a team to blitz about 100
    products to run DECmigrate on them and where there are the warnings,
    work with the groups to rebuild a VAX version with those problems fixed
    and then migrate them with no errors so they 100% converted.
    
    What a nioce thing to say in February, Digital has provided 100
    layered products ALPHA compatible for customer use.
    
    Get a SWAT team together, it could help alot!
    
    Tom

    literature:
    >If I had one thing to add however is some nice documents to hand out
    
    	If you mean product literature, we had this in our sales office
    	for several days now. It's available and pretty good.
    
    Marketing from the field:
    
    I prefer to think that the most valuable input here is from our
    customers, not from DEC whether they be field people or not. I'm
    not questioning whether we are already doing this..just clarifying the
    point.
    

    The Wall Street Journal article on the Alpha announcement was 1 column
    wide, 2 inches long, buried on about the 12th page of the Journal.  The
    David Stone resigns article was on page 3, 1 column wide, 11 inches
    long, and continued on page 5.  Sad commentary on our pr efforts for
    Alpha IMHO.
    
    Mark
    

We may be bitching about the wrong group.  I know there is at least one
seperate group in DEC that handles "trade shows".  Those are the people that I
think should be replaced.  I have yet to hear about an exciting Digital
announcment or trade show booth.
It is a pitty that we can not come up with the flashy stuff that is at least
eye catching at these shows.  At Unix Expo in 91 there were some companies that
went a bit overboard with some things but their booths were often packed.

bjm

Some software products are in VTX SOFTBASE; option 8.
Use option 12 for comments sent back to the SOFTbase
managment.

-mns-

    
    	I just came back from spending three days at Autofact.  I
    	worked the show for three days full time spending all my
    	time talking to customers about Alpha migration and I have
    	a very different impression.
    
    	It is true that the HP booth and other vendors booths were
    	a lot more glitzy, but the DEC booth was well done and was
    	packed with people the whole time I was there.  I talked to
    	numerous customers about Alpha and their response was out-
    	standing.  I personally was involved in several specific
    	situations where a customer had made a decision to purchase
    	another vendor's equipment and reconsidered after seeing
    	the Alpha systems.
    
    	Many other customers were really reassured about Digital
    	and although they may not migrate to Alpha right away, it
    	reinforced their decision to stay with Digital.  We also
    	had numerous CSO's come over who wanted to talk about
    	porting their applications.  IBM, HP, and Sun were also
    	all over the place trying to get more information on Alpha.
    
    	There is so much negative "DEC-bashing" in this conference
    	that I hardly read it any more, but I had to respond to
    	this note to try and give a little bit more of a balanced
    	perspective.
    
    	Sure there were a lot of things at Autofact that might
    	have been done better, but there were a lot of very positive
    	things that came out of it as well.  I certainly agree that
    	Digital can do a better job of marketing our products and
    	capabilities, but I think Alpha has made an enormous amount
    	of progress in that direction....we do have plenty of room
    	to continue improving but we don't necessarily have to emulate
    	HP either.  There's a lot of phony, glitzy, marketing hype
    	out there and many customers can see right through it.
    
    	I hope we can find a way to reduce all the "DEC-bashing"
    	that goes on in this conference....it can be very discouraging
    	to all of the people who are out there working hard to
    	try to restore a positive image about this company in
    	the eyes of our customers.  If we don't truly believe
    	in this company ourselves, how do you expect our customers
    	to feel?
    
    	Chuck
    

Article: 471
Newsgroups: biz.dec
From: price@ssgv01.enet.dec.com ("Windows NT PR - 603-881-0583, DTN 381-0583  10-Nov-1992 1502")
Subject: DECnews/Speed Champ Alpha AXP, IndyCar Highlight AUTOFACT Exhibit
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 12:52:51 PST
 
||||||||||||  DEC n e w s  ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
                                              Digital Equipment Corporation
                                          Maynard, Massachusetts 01754-2571
Editorial contact:
 
     	 McLaren Harris
     	 Electronics/Aerospace Industries
     	 (508) 467-3488
 
     	 Lisa Lipson
     	 Automotive and General Discrete Industries
     	 (508) 467-9381
 
            MICROPROCESSOR SPEED CHAMP ALPHA AXP, INDYCAR
         CHAMP RAHAL HIGHLIGHT DIGITAL AUTOFACT '92 EXHIBIT
 
DETROIT -- November 10, 1992 -- New Alpha AXP 64-bit RISC systems, 
1992 IndyCar World Champion Bobby Rahal, and a wide range of 
applications and services to support integrated engineering and 
manufacturing are the stars of Digital Equipment Corporation's 
exhibit at the AUTOFACT '92 exposition today through Thursday at 
Cobo Hall.
     Under the theme, "Winning Through Teamwork and Technology," the 
Digital exhibit at Booth 1440 features the first public showing of 
Digital's new Alpha AXP workstations and servers, formally announced 
today at sites in Boston and San Jose as well as in Europe and Japan 
(see separate press kit).  The Alpha AXP systems are demonstrating 
six analysis and design applications and four manufacturing 
applications from major cooperating software vendors.
     Digital is also highlighting its sponsorship and technical 
support of the Rahal-Hogan Team, this year's world champions in 
IndyCar competition, with a visit to the Digital booth by driver and 
owner Bobby Rahal on Wednesday at 1:30 p.m.
     Working together, the Rahal-Hogan Team and Digital applied the 
concept of "Winning Through Teamwork and Technology" to help Rahal 
win the championship.  Digital helped Rahal-Hogan use the best mix 
of people, business, and technology solutions needed to integrate 
their racing enterprise.  As systems integrator, Digital helped tie 
the enterprise's information needs to its business objectives with 
an extensive offering of hardware, software, and consulting 
expertise.
     "This is perhaps the most powerful combination of technology 
and total solutions for design and manufacturing that Digital has 
ever brought to AUTOFACT," said Dave Copeland, vice president, 
Manufacturing Industries.  "Our first Alpha AXP workstations and 
servers are at the very top level of performance for design and 
analysis, and they are just the beginning.  The DECfactory solutions 
embrace every dimension of factory operation from standalone 
applications to integrated manufacturing systems.
     "The design and analysis applications from our cooperating CSO 
(Complementary Solutions Organization) vendors, running on Alpha AXP 
and DECstation platforms, are strictly world-class.  And our 
advances in developing comprehensive product data management (PDM) 
systems and STEP-compliant development software will enable 
engineering and manufacturing companies to manage data across the 
enterprise and into the future," Copeland said.
 
The Digital exhibit comprises the following major demonstrations:
 
     o	DECfactory solutions, featuring an integrated manufacturing 
        process that provides realtime information to key people on 
        the factory floor (planners, supervisors, and operators) at 
        every stage of the production cycle, enabling intelligent 
        decisions and operational improvements.  Leading third-party 
        solutions include software for EDI, MRP II, factory floor 
        management, decision support, and quality.  These solutions 
        are components of an integration framework that incorporates 
        Digital's Network Application Support (NAS) for manufacturing.
 
     o	Product data management (PDM) systems for integrated product 
        development, including a Customizable User Interface (CUI) 
        Workbench service for virtually any manufacturing work 
        environment;  PowerFrame and EDCS II software to enable data 
        tracking and management at team, workgroup, and department 
        levels;  a graphical user interface using MS-Windows for 
        access to engineering and manufacturing data managed by EDCS 
        II servers;  and new OpenDATA technology for creating 
        STEP-compliant repositories and databases, including Digital's 
        OpenDATA STEP Integration Kit and OpenDATA EXPRESS Language 
        Processor for STEP Level 3 implementation.
 
     o	The Alpha AXP Showcase, presenting Digital's first system-
     	level products using the Alpha AXP 64-bit RISC architecture 
        and the industry's fastest microprocessors, demonstrating 
        applications from:
 
     	   Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (ANSYS)
 
     	   MCS, Inc. (ANVIL-5000)
 
     	   Adra Systems, Inc. (CADRA-III)
 
     	   Matra-Datavision, Inc. (EUCLID-IS)
 
     	   PDA Engineering, Inc. (PATRAN-G)
 
     	   Electronic Data Systems, Inc. (UNIGRAPHICS II)
 
     	   ASK Computer Systems, Inc. (MANMAN)
 
     	   BBN Software Products (RS/1)
 
     	   Xerox Computer Services (CHESS)
 
     	   Salerno Manufacturing Systems (SPM+)
 
 
     o	DEC Realtime Integrator software for realtime data acquisition 
        and test application development, using icons representing 
        hundreds of standard instruments and functions to design test 
        solutions and modify program parameters.  A working wind 
        tunnel generates airflow and pressure data to demonstrate 
        realtime displays and ease-of-use features in test design and 
        modification.
 
     o	Digital's alliance with Cray Research, Inc., for worldwide 
        marketing and support of the CRAY Y-MP EL entry-level 
        supercomputer.  A laser video contains industry-specific case 
        studies and testimonials by Cray system users, viewer-
        selectable in multiple languages;  a live CRAY Y-MP EL is 
        being demonstrated by Cray Research at Booth 2018.
 
     "We look for Alpha AXP workstations and servers to become 
universal platforms for OpenVMS, UNIX, and Microsoft Windows 
NT-based applications," said Glenn Armbruster, vice president, 
Automotive and General Discrete Industries.  "Alpha AXP advantages 
in performance will enable simulation of entire mechanical and 
electromechanical assemblies, resulting in time-to-market and 
quality improvements.  This new technology, along with our 
integration and application development software and services, is 
strong evidence both of our achievements and our commitment to 
future support of manufacturing industries."
     Digital Equipment Corporation, headquartered in Maynard, 
Massachusetts, is the leading worldwide supplier of networked 
computer systems, software and services.  Digital pioneered and 
leads the industry in interactive, distributed and multivendor 
computing.  Digital and its business partners deliver the power to 
use the best integrated solutions - from desktop to data center - 
in open information environments.

                                ####
... 
    

    
    	Re: .17
    
    >The Wall Street Journal article on the Alpha announcement was 1 column
    >wide, 2 inches long, buried on about the 12th page of the Journal.  The
    >David Stone resigns article was on page 3, 1 column wide, 11 inches
    >long, and continued on page 5.  Sad commentary on our pr efforts for
    >Alpha IMHO.
    
    	Look at it from the WSJ's perspective, however.  We've been hinting
    at Alpha for such a long time now (didn't we pre-announce it a half year
    ago?) that its actual announcement is not major "news".  A big change
    in the high levels of Digital's management _is_ big news for the
    average WSJ reader who is more interested in corporate strategies and
    profits rather than technology.  Stone's resignation had more of a
    surprise factor to it, thus it gets more ink.
    
    							-craig

I completely agree with .21

As I read through this note, all I saw was mostly negative comments about our
products.  Digital's future is on the line and we must ALL do our share to
improve things.  If we criticize, let's do it in a constructive way.  Let's
ALL try to have a positive attitude despite what the person in the cube next
to us is saying and that way, we can't say that we contributed to our own
downfall.

I'm personally looking forward to hearing about future realeases of Alpha-based
products and I think it's the right way to go for Digital.

/Mario

		WHERE ARE THE ALPHA MACHINES ?

		WHERE ARE THE ALPHA MACHINES ?

		WHERE ARE THE ALPHA MACHINES ?

		WHERE ARE THE ALPHA MACHINES ?

		WHERE ARE THE ALPHA MACHINES ?


That was the most asked question at the Digital booth at Autofact in Detroit.

I was personally asked about 10-15 times by customers.  There where no LARGE
SIGNS to get people's attention....

We should have a whole show around the alpha machines...... Why did we miss 
this great opportunity to expose Alpha to over 20000 people that buy primary 
workstations for their Engineering/Manufacturing  solutions....??????

People have to go to booth at Autofact that was making signs to have them make 
a sign (on a fan-fold paper 11x17) ALPHA AXP....

I do not understand this.... 8-(


RE: Digital Bashing.... 
    I disagree ... we CARE and we need to discuss it so we can do a 
    better job next time....  
    If I did not care I would not bother to discuss it....

gss

    re .21  
    
    I believe in DEC that's is why I am still here. However
    when I see a problem I don't shut my eyes to it, I try to
    fix it. If something can be made better why not? I can tell
    you that management in Detroit is so upset about about DEC's
    presence at AutoFact that Mr. Palmer is going to be notified.
    As a sales support person in Detroit I have been able to talk
    to customers that stopped at our booth. They were not impressed
    and they should have been! We are getting killed by HP and SUN out
    here yet we still made our budget in 92. It just shows you that
    with some real help from corporate via advertising/marketing we
    can make a substantial profit and have world class products too.
    
    		-Jim-


 ^			    Announcement Plan
 |
 |			     "Rolling Thunder"
 |
 | $ Revenue & Profit						Major Event
 |								Fall FY94
 |
 |						  New Business
 |						New Applications
 |						      Summer
 |						   Announcement
 |
 |				   Industries &
 |				   Applications
 |				       Spring
 |				    Announcement
 |
 |
 |			    Desktop/
 |			     W/NT
 |			     Winter
 |			  Announcement
 |
 |
 |
 |		    Fall
 |		Announcement
 |		Alpha AXP
 |
 |   Palmer
 |   Press
 |   Event
 |
 |	|	    |	      |	          |	       |	       |
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------>
      October    November    March       April 	     September       October +
       1992       1992        1993       1993          1993           1993

Sales Update/Special Issue, Vol.24 No. 1, October 26, 1992


    RE:.20  Good to hear from you Mike
    
    Edwin

    
RTf  11/10 0543  Digital<DEC.N>launches 64 megabyte chip in Germany

    MUNICH, Germany, Nov 10, Reuter - Computer maker Digital Equipment Corp of
the United States has launched a series of mainframes using its 64 megabyte
Alpha AXF chip in Germany, Digital's German subsidiary said.
 REUTER

The enclosed trip report describes a recent (pre-Alpha AXP announcement) 
conference for the Oil and Gas industry held in New Orleans.  The conference
was primarily for the Exploration and Production areas of the industry.  In
summary, it was a real pleasure to be part of the Digital group that had so
much to say, that had so much to show - and this before announcement - to
customers, CSOs and yeah, to the competitor vendors who came in to our booth
being puffed up and left with the wind off their sails (preferably, their 
SALES!)

This is an exciting time to be at Digital and it really is our customers
who will be reaping the benefits from our architecture, operating system
software, applications, solutions and from our ernest intention and dedication 
toward being best-in-class.

enc: my trip report for Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) Conference
====================================

From:	MR4DEC::RFRANCEY      2-Nov-92 15:50
To:	PASHAPOUR
CC:	ABABBI,ISAACSON,MTS$"hso::Gary Litman",MGREENFIELD,RMCCOWAN,RFRANCEY
Subj:	SEG Trip Report - Ron Francey

		Subject: SEG Trip Report - Ron Francey

Amin,

The SEG was a success for Digital in several areas.  It was a model for
teamwork at its best.  From pre-staging in Northboro through staging in
New Orleans, an attractive and enticing booth was assembled which lured
a steady stream of interested persons to the Digital booth at SEG.

From the outer periphery, marketing people served as barkers gathering 
passers-by and through informal dialog they were able to introduce the 
Alpha AXP platforms and then hand off the people to specialists within
various areas within the booth.

I shall concentrate on the two areas within the booth that I occupied:
OSF/1 and openVMS.  The openVMS area received the least interest for a
few reasons.  A semi-rolling demo of Intera's GRAF application displayed
sixteen static pictures to the MFX600.  Of greater interest to passers-by
than the actual application was the use of the six-headed MFX600 as a
superfast X Windowing Display device.  Mike Breen did an excellent job at
describing and showing off its values.

The other reason for a not-too-enthusiastic interest in openVMS was due to
an almost universal interest in UNIX based systems.  In fact, two customers
were originally on VMS systems.  One had ported with great (stated) 
difficulty to ULTRIX and was most concerned about the necessity of a 
smooth migration to OSF/1 on the Alpha AXP platforms.  The other customer
is on VMS and has decided to port to UNIX and is in decision making time
on selecting the vendor of choice.  Both customers were greatly relieved
to know of the 3-day Mathematica native port which I demo'd to them.  They
were also impressed with the few days it took to port GMA's Unisyn of
which I also demo'd.

I also described to the same two customers (and probably a few hundred
other customers) the benefits of our translation tool.  GOCAD was so
very impressed with the numbers of interested people flocking to our
booth that they reversed their earlier position not to demo their 2D
wireframe application at our booth.  They, in fact, decided to have two
or three people from GOCAD demo their application in our booth for all
interested parties - and there were many people who were impressed with
its being shown and with its being received over the net from France and
being in demonstrable translated form within seventeen minutes.

GOCAD was also very impressed with the pereformance of Alpha AXP and
wishes to partner with Digital on producing a white paper on 64-bit
goodness for their application and in doing a partnering port of their
application exploiting the Alpha AXP's 64-bitness.  I have been asked
by Jerry Isaacson to champion this project.

Probably the most asked questions had to do with migration and there 
only existed times when customers and/or CSOs went away thoroughly
satisfied and confident that Digital had its act together regarding
migration.  I always referenced our migration guides, our translation
tools and showed the brief paper on "32/64 Bit Portability Issues".

When asked about our "downsizing", I could only respond that we (Digital)
were really excited about being here at the show, that we were at the
leading edge of technology as expressed through the various demonstrable
applications we were showing related directly to their Oil and Gas 
Exploration fields of interest, that we had yet to announce the several
new Alpha AXP platforms which we were showing running real, live 
applications, that we were at the early stage of the new Alpha AXP 
architecture when other architectures were coming to a last gasp, that
we were offering new possibilities for applications not possible without
a 64-bit architecture, that from desktop thru deskside thru several levels
of servers we were able to meet any challenge, to offer solutions which
would meet their needs.

For people who were concerned with I/O and bandwidth, we were able to
walk them through support all the way from 5 or 10MB SCSI, through 
almost a sustained 100MB TurboChannel, through a 200MB HPPI VME, 
through Futurebus+ running from 200MB and on up to 400MB per second.

For people asking asbout RAM, we offered solutions ranging from maximums
of 128MB to 14GB.  

We stated that we were showing two operating systems prior to announcement 
and referred to the next booth running NT on a DEC PC 433 (intel) with a
port to the Alpha AXP PC coming very soon.

Graphics questions allowed us to remark about the presence of a Kubota 
representative standing within our booth just a few feet and stations
away.

When questioned about interoperability, we had easy answers around TCP/IP, 
DECnet, NFS, standards.

Pricing questions got answers that we were at preannouncement and that
Digital has intentionality for agressiveness in this area.  

It was a personal delight to engage with the waves of competitors who had 
obviously been prompted at knock-offs to our Alpha AXP platforms.  They
were envious of our having a spokesperson from Wolfram demoing a native
port of Mathematica.  They were surprised that GMA was native ported and
that we had such great tools for translation, and had documentation on
migration that I was pleased to wave in front of their faces.  I am sure
they went away a little more apprehensive of their own situation with
slight twinges in their stomachs over the reality they saw live.

There was absolutely no doubt about anticipated performance by customers
and they required no quantifiable proof in this area.  The subjective
perception by them was that our performance is real.  I did make reference
to a quote from Wolfram in that this was the most impressive platform they
had EVER seen.  Where representatives of Wolfram told me that the speed of
the Alpha AXP was seen to be from six to twelve times faster that their
previous fastest machine, an [you'll have to guess!] I restated the quote that
it was seen to be "an order of magnitude" faster than the previous fastest
platform they had seen.

In summary, we damned the torpedoes and went full speed ahead.  From now
on "A" stands for Alpha AXP!

	Regards,

	Ron

    Cross-posted:
    
             <<< ASIMOV::$1$DUA4:[NOTES$LIBRARY]MARKETING.NOTE;5 >>>
                   -< Marketing - Digital Internal Use Only >-
================================================================================
Note 2030.31              Alpha: Product Announcements                  31 of 32
VERGA::FACHON                                        32 lines  13-NOV-1992 11:59
                                  -< Fight! >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In a recent article -- someone out there should know which one --
    there was a comment, made by either an HP muckety-muck or an 
    analyst, about Alpha.  The quote (and I paraphrase), came amidst 
    a general barrage of negative, who-are-they-[DEC]-trying-to-kid,
    comments.  It went something like this:
    
    "The 64-bit architecture may be fine for 1996..."
     With the general gist being there are no applications that 
     can use it today, and there are faster, more practical, systems 
     available from other vendors.  [It was someone at HP, I think.]
    
    Now, I haven't read all the business sections in every paper
    to see if we jumped on this, but what I have seen makes me think 
    this comment has gone un-rebutted.  Why are we blowing
    this?  Our PR folks should have had a quote in the paper
    the very next day:
    
      "Not viable until 1996?  Isn't it going to be 
       1993 in a few weeks?  If you want price-performance
       to beat anyone *TODAY*, and the architecture of "1996" 
       *and beyond*, talk to DEC about Alpha_AXP ASAP!"
    
    But instead we seem to roll over.  PLEASE correct me if I'm
    wrong.
    
    If you know the quote I'm talking about, and if it *has* gone 
    un-contested, please let me know who to pester about it.  I've 
    got plenty of fight and don't care if it gets me fired.  This crap 
    is *REDICULOUS!*
    
    Sincerly yours,
    Dean F.
    
    

    RE:   .11
    
    
     >  to bad DEC couldn't sell TTB and MRO for what they paid for the
     >  contents.
    
    Great line.  Unfortunately, TTB is a leased facility.  I'm told it was
    (and still is) the most expensive leased property per square foot.

    Re .24 let us all set around and look at our navals while the ship
    sinks.

    
    Re: last
    
    That is exactly what you would expect to happen in the absence of
    any clear leadership.  Navel contemplation can be an act of desperation
    or it can be an act of rebellion.  I think many of us are guilty of
    both.

    
    re: .- a couple...
    
    	in terms of who to vent your frustrations to ... try Bob Supnik
    
    	VP of Alpha Program Office or Dallas Kirk (marketing) cormts::kirk
    
    	and human::supnik....
    

    
>    "The 64-bit architecture may be fine for 1996..."
>     With the general gist being there are no applications that 
>     can use it today, and there are faster, more practical, systems 
>     available from other vendors.  [It was someone at HP, I think.]
    
    This sounds very much like Hp messages lately.
    
    Couple of customers I have a quite close contact, have told me that HP
    has "leaked" "For Intenal Distribution Only" Memos to customer. They
    state few "facts":
    
    	- Customer doesn't need 64-bit computing today
    	- And if customer needs it, well, our chips have 64-bits internal
    	  datapaths already = HEY! we're 64 bits already!
    	- We're developing more 64 bit features just in case that customers
    	  might need them someday 
    
    Maybe we should sell 21064 based systems as 128 bit technology because
    of the widths of the internal datapaths ;-)
    
    		-Jari
    
                     

    re: .36
    
    > in terms of who to vent your frustrations to ... try Bob Supnik
    > VP of Alpha Program Office or Dallas Kirk (marketing) cormts::kirk
    
    I don't suggest you start venting on Bob Supnik for three reasons: 
    
    1) He has been working around the clock on everything from designing
    presentations, monitoring anti-Alpha stuff on the internet, helping
    both Alpha/VMS and Alpha/OSF work on performance, helping to excite
    engineers and customers and a host of other things I'll never even know. 
    
    2) He's a VP, and I can tell you from experience that sending mail to a 
    VP can have unforseen and unpredictable malignant effects. I would still 
    send mail when appropriate but would be very sure my reasons are sound, 
    my management aware, and there wasn't a more efficient escalation process 
    before doing so. 
    
    3) Before anyone vents on anyone else about 'poor Alpha marketing' 
    ask yourself what you've done to promote Alpha. I hear far more Digital 
    people speak negatively than positively, most often without good
    reasons: one example is the slogan "VMS is VMS" (referring to VAX and 
    Alpha VMS migration) was considered overly optimistic, including by me,
    until customer after customer, finishing an application port, said the 
    exact same words: "VMS (really) is VMS!" 
    
    I spent alot of time at customer sites in the San Franisco Bay Area: 
    Apple, Sybase, NCD, Oracle, TGV, Rosenberg, ABB, Ingres, SCO Unix ect... 
    and I've never heard a security guard, engineer, secretary or sales rep 
    say anything other than they had the best products and the best work 
    environment. Marketing is everyones responsibility, we have many of the 
    best products in the industry, especially regarding Alpha, if you don't 
    believe it, learn more about them. Read the article in Byte or Spectrum. 

I agree with John.  Bob's the technical director of the Alpha program, and may
be able to shake some action around the marketing situation, but the best
place to start may be:

$ elf find ed pastor

Common Name:  EDWARD PASTOR 
Search Surname: PASTOR  Search Given Name:  EDWARD, EDWARD J,  ED  
DTN:  293-5172,  293-5172  Telephone:  508-264-5172  
Intrnl Mail Addr:  BXB1-2/C7  Location:  BXB  Node:  HUMAN  Username:  PASTOR
Org Unit:  GIS/VSS,  VAX SYSTEMS & SERVERS,  ALPHA BUSINESS OFFICE  
Position:  ALPHA MARKET DEVELOPMENT MANAGER

RE: .38

	Ah, Rosenberg.. One of my favourites.. I'm headed out there this
	week to install FT2 of V6.0 (Blade). It should be alot of fun. :-)

							mike

    We could stand to be a little less Stealthy. Everywhere I look I see
    IBM, SUN, HP, even DG making inroads to our collective conscience. 
    They do this in a number of ways. Wang attributes a lot of its boom
    years to the television advertising it did during then.
    
                                               Dave B.

    
    	Are we at COMDEX in Las Vegas?  It's supposedly the "biggest
    	computer show on earth" - 130,000 people and more than 2,000
    	big and small companies.
    
    	Thanks,
    	Tom
    

         I heard not -- and I'd be VERY pleased to have heard wrong!
    

    My group has a booth at Comdex...
    

    but we don't have anything to do with Alpha.
    
    Bob - DECgenisys development

    
    	Well, I've been away from Notes for awhile now (working on last
    weeks announcement), so I'm in the process of catching up.  There are a
    couple of comments in previous replies that I would like to address.  I
    work in the Events group, and have been involved with trade
    shows/marketing for about 12yrs.  Many of you probably know me if you
    were involved in DECworld this year.
    
    	First, re: .15
    
    	The Globe was, once again, grossly inaccurate in their article, as
    I hope most people know by now.  Had they taken 5 minutes to take the
    escalator down 1 flight from where they were sitting in the auditorium
    at the World Trade Center, they would have seen 80 applications running
    in the Solutions Demo area at the announcement.  I did not listen to
    the "press" announcement, but I'm sure this was mentioned, as the press
    were invited to come downstairs and view the demo area.  When I started
    working on this project, I was concerned about what we would show that
    would be different from what people saw at DECworld.  I had heard mixed
    comments from various marketing groups about availability of products
    running on the Alpha platform, and I think that there is an internal
    awareness problem in some areas, but in fact, we had to DOUBLE the
    initial size of the demo area to make room for all the CSO's that
    wanted to be part of the event (many thanks to P/PEG and ISV groups for
    the technical support they provided to get their vendors up and
    running).  The final tally was 80 applications, and had we been given
    more time (this came together in less than 4wks, but that's another
    note) we would have had many more.
    
    re: .18
    
    	Replacing the "Trade Show group"...A point that needs to be made
    here (yes, in defense of my own group" is that we are an
    "implementation" group.  We do not establish the goals that Digital
    wants to acheive at any given marketing event.  It is unfortunate that
    many marketing groups don't establish goals either.  Some groups do a
    good job at this, others don't.  Digital spends a LOT of money at trade
    shows, and I for one believe that we attend too many shows without
    a well defined set of goals.  Many times we attend because 1) "We've
    always been there.", or 2)IBM and/or HP and/or SUN will be there. 
    These are clearly not good reasons for spending hundreds of thousands
    of dollars.  We work with the sponsoring group to help them acheive
    their goals for a specific event.  If a group chooses not to emphasize
    a particular area of a booth, that is their choice.  We can make them
    aware of certain things, make recomendations, etc...but the choice is
    theirs, as are the dollars, which leads to my reply to .19, PR budget.
    
    re: .19
    
    	This is an area that seems to be causing a lot of trouble
    throughout the company, and cannot be blamed totally on funding
    cutbacks.  With all of the restructuring, layoffs, AND funding cuts, we
    deal with groups almost weekly that want to do an event, but have
    little of NO money budgeted for it.  Marketing groups have had budgets
    cut for two reasons: 1) To cut spending, and 2) To force them to look
    at where they should be spending marketing dollars to get the greatest
    impact.  But many groups are still trying to do the same number of
    events with a budget that has been greatly reduced.  The result shows
    up in the end product.  Many times we deal with "new" faces, that have
    not had a lot of experience with events.  They have no idea what the
    actual costs of producing a show are.  
    However, with the appointment of Charlie Hollaran, I believe that the
    "right" questions are being asked, and that there will be a concise
    corporate marketing plan forthcoming.
    
    All in all, I was impressed with what we had to show, and the way THIS
    event was executed.  I talked to several CSO's in Boston, and they were
    thrilled with Alpha.
    
    
    Jim Butler
    
    

    Re: .42-.44
    
    	Yes, Digital IS at Comdex. However, I believe there are 3 seperate
    booths at the show, and have no idea (although I could guess) if the
    content was was ever looked at collectively.  
    
    Yes, Comdex is the mother of all trade shows in the U.S., and it is not
    cheap to be there.  IBM spent over $850K just for their FLOOR SPACE at
    this show.
    
    	Jim
    

    ...scattered between the Digital and Microsoft booths, running
    Windows/NT and 11 "shink-wrap" (at least in their Windows/DOS versions)
    applications.

Subj:	NOV. 10 SAN JOSE PRESS WRAP-UP                                         1

From:	NAME: Juleigh Rawlings @IVO         
	FUNC: CORPORATE PUBLIC RELATIONS      
	TEL: 714-261-4520                     <RAWLINGS.JULEIGH AT NEWPRTA1 at 
DOHENY at TUS>
To:     See Below


***********************************************************************
		SAN JOSE, ALPHA AXP PRESS EVENT SUMMARY
***********************************************************************

From: Juleigh Rawlings/Dave Bouffard

On November 10, 50 Bay Area reporters, consultants and financial
analysts witnessed the launch of Alpha AXP. Digital received widespread
pre- and post event coverage which ranged from balanced to positive.
This was especially exciting, in light of the fact the event was held
in the heartland of the heated competitive battles launched by Sun and HP.

HIGHLIGHTS:

EXCELLENT ATTENDANCE at the General Press Briefing.

EXCELLENT SPEAKERS:
Henry Ancona/Don Gaubatz/Jerry Baker/Mark O'Connell


STRONG PRINT COVERAGE:

SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS - "Big Week ahead for workstation makers"

The new products are so important to the company that many people
believe arch-rivals H-P and Sun timed their own less significant
announcements to steal some of Digital's thunder.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - "Rivals to Release New Workstations"

DEC claims that the Alpha AXP chip is the fastest microprocessor
on the market, and it is counting on the new technology to revitalize
its workstation business. Analysts said the Alpha machines could help
DEC chip away at sales in science and engineering markets at the expense
of HP and IBM Corp.

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER- "Blitz of new Workstation Models Out"

DEC unveiled workstations priced from $15,000 to $300,000 based
on a revolutionary chip that offers mind-boggling increases in
performance. And in an industry famed for introducing "products"
long before their delivery, the Massachusetts-based firm announced
another novelty. "We're coming to the market with systems we can take
orders for today," said Mark O'Connell. "When is the last time you
saw that?"

LOS ANGELES TIMES - "Computer Giants Drag Out Their Big Guns in 
		     Workstation Wars."

Digital Equipment, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard
all unveil new workstations today.

The arrival of DEC's Alpha products - earlier than many analysts
had expected - is a good omen for new DEC Chairman Robert Palmer,
who replaced Kenneth Olsen last month. "The Alpha launch is remaking
the company; it's very much a make-or-break thing for them," said
Terry Bennett, an analyst with the market research firm Infocorp.
He described DEC's new products as "very competitive."

FINANCIAL TIMES (LONDON) - "Computer Rivals Unveil New Ranges"

The new Alpha AXP chip, which processes information 64-bits at at time
similar to a Supercomputer - is likely to make Digital the front
runner. 

 
STRONG BROADCAST COVERAGE:

CHANNEL 11, KNTV Morning News. 

Jim Goldman, a well-known local anchor, highlighted
the Digital announcement with video coverage, while only 
giving a brief mention to the Sun and HP announcements. 
Later that morning, Goldman was back on the air indicating
that he had just received information from SUN and HP. 
We took this to indicate SUN and HP were caught off guard 
at our proactive use of broadcast and were scurrying to react. 
This gave us great pleasure as we outplayed SUN and HP in their
own backyard.

Additional Broadcast Coverage:

**KNTV-TV, Channel 11 Covered the Customer Event live.
    		   			
GOOD MORNING		KNTV-TV	    SAN JOSE	    6:00 AM
SAN JOSE
    
MIDDAY SAN JOSE		KNTV-TV	    SAN JOSE	   11:30 AM
    
NEWS 11			KNTV-TV	    SAN JOSE	    6:00 PM
    		   				   11:00 PM
    
GOOD MORNING		KNTV-TV	    SAN JOSE	    6:00 AM
    
    
KGO-TV, Channel 7 and KNBR-AM clipped from the Video News Release.

    
7 NEWS		KGO-TV	    SAN FRANCISCO  6:00 AM
    		   			   6:00 PM
        
NEWS		KNBR-AM	    SAN FRANCISCO  8:45 AM



REPORTER, ANALYST COMMENTS:

"... the Sun announcement (2 hours earlier) was flashy, but I'm tired
of hearing McNealy put down everybody... liked your announcement.
It was nice, enjoyable and very professional...
					LAURA SEGERVALL - DATAQUEST

After attending announcements on both coast's IDC's VICKI BROWN and
NANCY BATTEY have improved their forecasts to when they think DEC will
ramp up their workstation volume sales -- to late '93 from '94.
Battey was pleased with the quality of content people at the west coast
event.


"I appreciate why so much attention is paid to channels, and your partners,
but we need to know how to design with alpha, how to design desktop
pcs with alpha, etc.  Can you help?"
				DAVE BURSKY, ELECTRONIC DESIGN, 
				(408) 441-0550

Unusual and positive for press event:  several members of SUNWORLD
editorial staff attended, as well as multiple members from UNIXWORLD,
UNIX REVIEW, and CORPORATE COMPUTING...



EXCELLENT TEAMWORK:

Kudos go out to everyone involved, with special mention to
the behind the scenes hard work of: 

Dave Close, Dom Ricchetti, Marion Dancy, Russ Jones, Jeff Patt,
Wendy Wickwire, Pamela Cook-Spitaleri, Trudy Kester, and Joe Chiramonte.
(Apologies to the obvious names we can't remember right now...)


COMMENTS:

The corporate message from Digital to the Silicon Valley was not
only delivered, but HEARD (with press clips as proof) loud and clear.

While in the final analysis the event scored in the 90s, 
future announcements must have more coordination and LEADERSHIP
from the beginning of the process.

Content support staff was Great, BUT still too many "Deccies" attending
a press event.

The breakout sessions were not as well attended, as might have been
expected by some.  This was mostly due to reporter deadlines on multiple 
announcements.  Again, we must keep in mind the needs of our 
customers (the press) when planning the venue.




To Distribution List:

Alan Pike@MLO,
Gail Daniels@LKG,
Charlie Holleran@CORE,
Joe Codispoti@PKO,
Elizabeth Reinhardt@PKO,
Jeffry Gibson@MLO,
MARK OCONNELL@MLO,
DAVE CLOSE@MLO,
HENRY ANCONA@MLO,
BOB KUCHARAVY@PKO,
BOTT IKELER@AKO,
DAVE PAOLINI@TRC,
ANDREW SPYBEY@RDL,
_DECWSE::BOUFFARD AT NEWPRTA1 at DOHENY at TUS,
Rolf Olsen@GEO,
Brad Allen@MLO,
Barry Mike@MLO,
Mark Fredrickson@MLO,
Don Gaubatz@MLO,
_LESCOM::PATT AT NEWPRTA1 at DOHENY at TUS,
_DECWSE::PAMC AT NEWPRTA1 at DOHENY at TUS,
_CALDEC::KESTER AT NEWPRTA1 at DOHENY at TUS,
_CALDEC::CHIRAMONTE AT NEWPRTA1 at DOHENY at TUS,
_DECWSE::WICKWIRE AT NEWPRTA1 at DOHENY at TUS,
SARAH MILLER@BXB,
CAROLE FULLER@MLO,
DIANE ALBANO@MRO,
PETER BAGG@OGO,
SUSAN BLOUNT@BXB,
ALAN BELANCIK@TTB,
SCOTT GORDON@BXB,
DON BRADLEY@OGO,
ANDY WAJCIKOWSKI@OGO,
ANTHONY WILLIAMS@WRO,
CECIL DYE@WRO,
BARBARA CHABRIER@WRO,
SANDY LAKE@WRO,
MIRIAM CARNAHAN@WRO

[headers after FF]

	Latest from Jensen WNT demos in Europe.............................
        Firstly, we had a Jensen (aka Alpha AXP PC) Windows NT on display
        at the European AXP announcement event at London on November 10.
        The interest was good, keeping in mind that the focus
        was on the Alpha AXP machines announced that day.

        That evening, Jensen went by taxi to the Wembley
        conference center (try taking a Cray-1 into a cab!) where
        a joint Digital-Microsoft software developers conference
        was being held. NCR had a big (refrigerator sized) machine
        running Windows NT...apparently with four 486s running in SMP
        mode. SGI had a R4000 based "PC" (offered to developers at
        $8300); Olivetti had their M700 R4000 based PC/workstation (offered
        to developers at $5800). We had about ten 450STs.

        They were all running Windows NT. Rumors had it that it took
        four hours to get the NCR rig booted and running!
        The next morning we installed Jensen and had Windows NT running
        in a matter of minutes, thanks to the perfect organization of
        the DEC UK team. With the help of a few Microsoft
        friends, we managed to run a few demos, like WINBEZ (demo'd
        by Bill Gates on Wall Street on Oct 28). However the people
        were not that impressed by what they saw. It became apparent
        we had to run a demo that had impact.

        While going through a demo list on the Intel Windows NT SDK,
        I noticed the Mandelbrot demo. I recalled this was the demo
        used at DECworld last summer to demonstrate Alpha's performance
        superiority over HP PA, Sun Sparc and IBM RS6000.
        After a searching through the Alpha AXP Windows NT demos
        it became obvious we did not have this. The Microsoft
        people said "no problem". They copied the files from the 450ST
        onto a floppy. We then copied these to Jensen. The fun was about
        to start. After finding out what the basic complier command
        is on Jensen (ACC!), the first compile attempt yielded a "fatal error"
        message, before you could say "um". Many attempts later,
        the "fatal error" message appeared after about 30 seconds.

        The verdict from the experts: "wrong libraries".
        Not being the kind of guy who gives up easily, I called
        Michel Gambier on the east coast of the US...thanks to UK DECs
        mobile phone facility that lets you dial into our "DTN" (EHQ wake up)!

        He said "oh yeh" (with a french accent) "just INCLUDE mumble".
        (The mumble is mine). After relaying the message to the Microsoft
        guys ("0h yeh", this time with a British accent) they successfully
        compiled the demo in a few minutes.

        As I was the speaker the next day, I asked if the organizers
        and MS would approve having Jensen WNT on stage to demo it.
        Everything worked perfectly. My presentation, like
        everyone else's was projected on two huge (12' x 20' ?)
        "LCD" rear projection screens. Just before the end, I said
        "and now to prove that Windows on Alpha AXP PC is here..."
        The screens switched to Chris from Microsoft UK, who expertly
        demo'd NT ....there was no question this looked like a PC,
        this felt like a PC, but maybe ...just maybe, a bit faster PC.
        After Chris got through point number one (this is a PC!), he
        started on point two: this is the world's fastest PC.

        He started up Mandelbrot on a 486 50 Mhz on one screen,
        then the same on our AXP PC, ensuring all parameters were identical.

        Then he said "now observe"....as one screen SLOWLY filled from
        top to bottom (guess which one that was!), the other
        screen just zipped along. You could hear the "oohs" and the
        "aahs" in the audience all around you. Chris ran the AXP Mandelbrot
        TWO TIMES before the 486 50Mhz was half way through! But he did
        not stop there. He insisted on running it on the R4000 50Mhz
        the 125Mhz Jensen outperformed the R4000 by a factor of two at
        least. Chris mentioned this was done with an "untuned compiler"
        (in reality a modified MIPS complier running in debug mode
        rather than the high performance AXP compiler scheduled for later).
        Not only that, but Jensen was running at the slowest of all our
        AXP chip speeds! The room was definitely sold on AXP. I ended with a
        last slide that mentioned our intent to offer developer's platforms
        in the near future and invited the audience to come talk to
        us during the coffee break and lunch. WE WERE MOBBED!

        I don't know how many cards and "interest to buy, rent or lease"
        sheets we collected. People were scrambling for pens and paper
        left and right. We could have sold tens of machines right then
        and there. The few developers I talked to after that demo, said
        they were definitely interested in moving "large spreadsheet",
        engineering and server apps from IBM PS/2 model 90's and up,
        to Alpha AXP PC WNT platforms, among others.

	regards
	Marc

	PS While I was in the UK, Image-IN in Geneva, ported their app
        for COMDEX. Thanks to the great support of Alan Scarboro and Peter
        Zgraggen here in Geneva, as well as the superb support we got from
        Jimmy Walker and Hassan Tadjali in Ayr, to get us a machine "just
        in time".


	Note: the mandelbrot axp nt files are on:
	TALE::sys$kits:[apcmandl]

From:	NARFVX::FRANCINI "He was a dark and stormy Knight.  18-Nov-1992 1403" 18-NOV-1992 14:06:08.83
To:	@inside
CC:	
Subj:	FWD: Fwd:  Mandelbrot demo on WindowsNT/Jensen - VERY CONVINCING...

From:	RANGER::RANGER::J_EASTLAKE "Pathworks for VMS Manager 226-2298  
18-Nov-1992 1352"   18-NOV-1992 13:53:31.10
To:	@dps,@extstaff
CC:	
Subj:	FWD: Fwd:  Mandelbrot demo on WindowsNT/Jensen - VERY CONVINCING...

From:	HUMAN::SCHULTZ "Alpha Development Operations Mgr - DTN 293-5532  18-Nov-
1992 0817"    18-NOV-1992 08:22
To:	@ASPM
CC:	@FRIDAY,SCHULTZ
Subj:	Fwd:  Mandelbrot demo on WindowsNT/Jensen - VERY CONVINCING...

From:	HUMAN::CONKLIN "Peter 293-5553 BXB1-2/C04  18-Nov-1992 0743" 18-NOV-
1992 07:44:15.71
To:	M-ALPHA-OFFICE,M-FRIDAY
CC:	
Subj:	fwd Zavadil: i:Jensen WNT events Europe

From:	AYOU08::49201::ZAVADIL "Marc Zavadil DTN 821 4202 SSM Strat Planning 
Europe  13-Nov-1992 1657" 13-NOV-1992 16:02:30.11
To:	@J5X5
Subj:	i:Jensen WNT events Europe

ref:[mz]london.txt

    Makes MY night, that's for sure!  Nice work...  Kudos to all!!  Dan

          <<< MR4SRV::NOTES$DISK:[NOTES$LIBRARY]DEC_HISTORY.NOTE;1 >>>
                        -< FORUM ON DIGITAL'S  HISTORY >-
================================================================================
Note 232.1                   repeating PC history !                       1 of 4
KXOVAX::SECRIST "RETE & Roll !"                      65 lines  11-NOV-1992 00:58
                 -< "It's in software and marketing, stupid." >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I know how to make Digital well again.	

	Digital has always been an excellent engineering company and
	a lousy marketing company.  While this has been proved by a
	history that repeats itself, part of the answer lies not just 
	in the marketing function, but how the market has changed since 
	Digital's inception.

	In the past there was nothing wrong with the engineering of 
	our Pro, Rainbow, DECmate, or PDT-11/150.  For example, the 
	Pro could have been very successful if launched from our 
	successful PDP-11 software base; instead, we had P/OS and the 
	stupid toolkit (as a customer I field tested the original 
	RSX-11/M "plus minus minus" on the Pro and was sold on it; 
	when they started pushing menued-P/OS and the idiot toolkit 
	on me I was outraged and incredulous).  By the time DEC figured
	this out and essentially got RSX and RT on the thing it was
	too late.

	In the present we wasted all of that money on those television
	ads during the basketball playoffs.  Here we are, pitching our
	wares to the public.  Conversations with machines around desks
	or restaurants, closing with "Digital: The Open Advantage."
	First off, what IS an "open advantage ?"  What are these guys
	selling ?  Software ?  Hardware ?  Consulting ?  What was that
	little refrigerator at the end of the conference room table ?
	Is there any music or sound to annunciate the beginning of the
	ad ?  Is there any color to catch your eye ?  Did you even see
	our logo in the white-on-beige closing scene in the conference
	room, or was that logo even a tenth the size of the screen
	even if you might have noticed it ?

	One major problem with Digital is cultral myopia.  Just because
	IBM failed with the Series/1 and the PCjr. doesn't mean that
	there wasn't a market for minicomputers or lower-cost PCs -- it
	simply meant they didn't understand what the market wanted in
	those areas.

	The technical base of the market has given way to the masses
	looking for commodities.  Once the masses have assimilated the
	banal spreadsheets and what not into their default expectations
	and they truly need some world-class engineering, a company
	such as ours will truly be successful.  I hope Digital lives to
	see that day.

	Most people within Digital see NT as the next hot, de facto
	standard, a bold new frontier spearheaded by former DECcie
	Dave Cutler as a logical evolution from DOS and Windows for the 
	computer architectures of the 21st century.  NT is *really* an
	operating system targeted at the highest growth-segment of the
	computer market, workstations and high-end PCs, that will
	dominate the desktop and server markets of the next decade.
	NT is an investment with the least risk, at the best profit
	margin, and a shorter time-to-profit than... hardware.

	I work for Digital because I think we have had, and always 
	will have, some of the best hardware and software engineering 
	technologies on this planet.  Unfortunately the simple fact
	is that Digital will *not* succeed unless it becomes a 
	marketing and software company.

	Regards,
	rcs

    re: .49  I LOVE IT!!  Exactly the kind of thing we need, IMO ...
    
    Steve

Re .34 and the comment about looking at our navals while the ship sinks.

I never looked at mine and I especially don't intend to after seeing the note
in .49.  How about you?

[forwarding headers after FF]

                   ************************************

                       THIS MEMO IS FROM DAVE PRICE

                   ************************************


We were invited to the Byte magazine awards presentation news conference and
were recognized as ONE OF THREE FINALISTS in the "Best System at COMDEX"
category.  LOTS OF ANTICPATION and EXCITEMENT just before the winner was
announced, and then disappointement when they announced the winner was a new
IBM desktop system that's energy-efficient and has 4 PCMCIA slots.

However, Digital's Alpha AXP PCs have won heavy-duty recognition in the
industry as a force to be reckoned with!  Wait 'til they see the future systems
we're doing -- we just need to make sure they run on unleaded fuel and accept
credit cards.

At the press conference I did have an opportunity to plop my COMDEX release
into the hands of widely-read Byte columnist Jerry Pournelle.  He said that he
was on the selection committee and he knows how close we came to winning - it
was very, very close.  He said that he's just starting to use Windows NT, and
he expects that when many of his readers start using NT he'll want to get his
hands on an Alpha AXP PC.

Byte also set up a photo opp for the journalists attending (the room was
overflowing with press -- right out the doors and into the hall).  John Foesch
posed for the photos along with the other finalists all holding their large
Byte Magazine COMDEX Awards FINALIST plaque which we hung in the booth promptly
after the press conference.

BTW... best portable at the show was Apple Macintosh DUO.
Best multimedia product was a tie between Apple's Quicktime and Microsoft Video
Windows.

I'd like to make this longer, but it's time to start another COMDEX day (I'm in
my hotel room as I write.)

Dave Price
Windows NT Public Relations

------------------------------

<forwards deleted>


From:	PSDVAX::BENECASA "18-Nov-1992 2219" 19-NOV-1992 03:31:29.76
To:	@COMDEX.DIS
CC:	
Subj:	Comdex update

Jensen is a HUGE hit at Comdex!!   The systems are humming away and the
press can't stay away!

On Tuesday there was a joint press event between Digital and Microsoft.  We 
expected about 50 press people - 100 showed up.  The event was supposed to be 
8-9am.  Press showed up at 7:40 am and some stayed till 10am.  In the past 
DEC couldn't even get the press to notice a DEC system.

Not only that but Jensen was nominated for "System of the Show" by Byte 
magazine!  (Unfortunately, we didn't win , but just lost.....) .  In the past 
Dave Price (PR) said Digital wouldn't even have been invited to attend Byte 
magazine's awards presentation.

DEC folks are collecting ISV names, as well as IHVs.   
The Jensen side of the DEC booth is constantly crowded.  We have systems as 
well in the Microsoft booth, the Microsoft/ISV booth and the Multimedia booth.

WE will have a lot of work to do once Comdex is over, but this is a great 
start!!

From:	NARFVX::FRANCINI "He was a dark and stormy Knight.  19-Nov-1992 1713" 19-NOV-1992 17:18:03.54
To:	@inside
CC:	
Subj:	FWD: More COMDEX news (about Jensens) from Dave Price

From:	RANGER::RANGER::J_EASTLAKE "Pathworks for VMS Manager 226-2298  
19-Nov-1992 1647"   19-NOV-1992 16:51:07.16
To:	@extstaff,@dps,dargin
CC:	
Subj:	FWD: More COMDEX news from Dave Price

From:	HUMAN::SALISBURY "Ellen, 293-5280, BXB1-2/C04  19-Nov-1992 1509"    19-
NOV-1992 16:40
To:	@ALPHA_PUBLIC:ALPHA-INTEREST
CC:	SALISBURY
Subj:	More COMDEX news from Dave Price

From:	SSGV01::PRICE "Windows NT PR - 603-881-0583, DTN 381-0583  19-Nov-1992 
1103" 19-NOV-1992 11:26:04.51
To:	@NTINTEREST
CC:	
Subj:	Update on Jensen's Byte magazine nomination

     Once again, I think both sides are right.  Parts of DEC are doing very
well, operating either at best-in-class (boy, ain't that an overused term?) or
at least running near the head of the pack.  Most of DEC ain't.

     I think whether or not DEC succeeds largely depends on how rapidly the
parts that are wallowing pick up culture from the parts that are charging
forward.  As a member of a group that feels rather wallowy to me, I'd love to
know what it feels like to be in a one of the progressive groups.  Perhaps
someone who is will start a note on the subject.

    re -.1
    
     THANKS! Thanks for the positive news. This is goodness! Now, somewhere
    in media or notes land I heard of a low-cost PC based on the ALPHA
    chip. I am interested in finding out its code name. It was NOT the
    JENSEN, but something starting with "T". It is reputedly smaller than
    the JENSEN.
    
    Confirm or deny? If inappropriate here please send VAXmail to
    NEWVAX::MZARUDZKI.
    
     This is driving me and some folks I work with crazy. Thanks in
    ADVANCE.
    -Mike Z.

    Pick up latest issue of Info World (Page 8?). THEY claim there's
    something called "Triumph" in the works.

    .49 'The Jensen experience' is a bright piece of news. Marc should e
    given a medal.
    
    Set in the context of this topic, Marc's story is enough to make you
    weep. Simply put, if the marketing of Alpha was half way organised then
    Marc should not had to do what he did. The Mandelbrot (a recognised
    benchmarker of compute power which technical and non-technical folk
    appreciate) should be part of a standard world wide demo kit. Marc
    should simply have set up his machine and selected a suitable demo to
    attract the atteion of the assembled customers and so blow the
    opposition out of the water. Another demo that springs to mind
    is FLIGHT. A network of AXP machines with punters dogfighting SOLID
    filled (not the current wireframe) aircraft will amply demostrate both
    the compute and I/O power of these machines.
    
    Now ask your self this. Will the demo that Marc put together be taken
    up by marketing and included as part of the Alpha marketing kit? such
    that any person anywhere in the world can simply run it up and blow the
    minds of the punters.
    
    Angus
    

             <<< TURRIS::TURRIS$DUA18:[NOTES$LIBRARY]GNU.NOTE;2 >>>
                              -< GNU Conference >-
================================================================================
Note 570.0  Anyone already working on Alpha extensions to GNU tools?  No replies
RICKS::EURUP::RUSLING "Dave Rusling REO2 G/E9 830-4" 59 lines  19-NOV-1992 16:57
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 . . .

	EUROPEAN SEMICONDUCTOR APPLICATIONS ENGINEERING
	===============================================

This short note is to announce the formation of a European Semiconductor
Applications Engineering group. This operation is part of the 
Semiconductor Engineering Group in Hudson, Mass., and hosted by the NAC
European Engineering group in Reading, England. 

A group of CBN staff lead by David Brash have transferred to SEG as 
the founder members of this initiative: 

		Anthony Berent
		David Brash
		Neal Crook		
		Dave Rusling


The immediate goal is to support design wins for Alpha technology in Europe. 
This will include architectural support, design support, and development of the 
associated tools required. The group will be an extension of a similar activity
currently underway in Hudson. It is the intention to extend our support to other
SCO products eg. PCI peripherals.

We are currently in Hudson familiarising ourselves with the technology and 
finding out how best to start making a contribution.  In the new year
we will be back in REO, please see ELF for our DTN and mail 
details.

While in Hudson, we can be reached as follows:

	From outside of Digital dial	(0101) 508 568 <ext>
			Digital DTN	           225 <ext>


				ext	location	email

	David Brash		6525	HLO2-3/J3	RICKS::BRASH
	Dave Rusling		6526	HLO2-3/K3	RICKS::RUSLING
	Anthony Berent		6527	HLO2-3/K3	RICKS::BERENT
	Neal Crook		4153	HLO2-3/K4	RICKS::CROOK


	Mailstop (all)	HLO2-3/J3

    In an article on the US chip industry, this week's Time
    magazine quotes the Guiness Book of Records designation
    of Digital's AXP as the world's fastest microprocessor.
    
    It was a very positive reference to AXP.
     

    The 11/23 issue of Business Week magazine had an article on 
    "Deconstructing the Computer Industry".  As usual DEC and IBM took 
    the brunt of the negative press and SUN came out smelling like a rose.
    
    There was one particular paragraph that I think sums up some of the
    discussions that have been taking place in this note about ALPHA.
    
    ...[computer analyst] says he has begun looking at [computer] companies
    altogether differently:  Forget technology and focus on marketing clout. 
    He likes SUN, because its identity as workstation leader is planted so
    firmly in the minds of computer buyers that it doesn't matter if SUN's
    technology isn't always ahead...
    
    What I have seen with the ALPHA announcement is a weak public
    display of marketing and a flood of technical reports to the field
    about how great ALPHA is.  LET'S TELL OUR CUSTOMERS!!!
    
    Til later...KC

    re .33
    
    >Unfortunately, TTB is a leased facility.  I'm told it was
    >(and still is) the most expensive leased property per square foot.
    
    It used to be the most expensive. Last year we cut a deal with Flatley 
    and signed a long-term lease for below their mortgage. Now it's the least 
    expensive site in New England, and that includes DEC-owned sites.
    
    Lisa

[extracted from Jeff Harrow's COMDEX report]

          From:   PSDVAX::BENECASA "18-Nov-1992 2219" 19-NOV-
          1992 03:31:29.76
          
          To:     @COMDEX.DIS
          
          Subj:   Comdex update
          
          Jensen is a HUGE hit at Comdex!!   The systems are
          humming away and the press can't stay away!
          
          On Tuesday there was a joint press event between
          Digital and Microsoft.  We expected about 50 press
          people - 100 showed up.  The event was supposed to
          be 8-9am.  Press showed up at 7:40 am and some
          stayed till 10am.  In the past DEC couldn't even
          get the press to notice a DEC system.
          
          Not only that but Jensen was nominated for "System
          of the Show" by Byte magazine!  (Unfortunately, we
          didn't win , but just lost.....) .  In the past
          Dave Price (PR) said Digital wouldn't even have
          been invited to attend Byte magazine's awards
          presentation.
          
          DEC folks are collecting ISV names, as well as
          IHVs.
          
          The Jensen side of the DEC booth is constantly
          crowded.  We have systems as well in the Microsoft
          booth, the Microsoft/ISV booth and the Multimedia
          booth.
          
          WE will have a lot of work to do once Comdex is
          over, but this is a great start!!

 
LOOK AT THE FACTS.  AUTOFACT 92 WAS A SUCCESS!

The figures are still coming in and more GOOD news is expected....

Net attendance (not including exhibitors) was 9,000,
Of that 9000, 3500 visited the Digital Booth!

Over 1500 inquiries were received from potential customers!

Over 800 Leads were uncovered!

10 Alpha AXP systems, running real manufacturing and engineering applications,
were shown in the booth!

35 Press and Analysts attended Digitals Reception!

More than 60 booth tours and interviews occurred between Digital Spokespersons
and press and analysts during the 3 day show, including international 
journalists from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom!

Over 300 people sat and stood in the aisles to watch Digitals Alpha AXP
Announcement

Over 500 people crowded the Digital booth to meet 1992 INDYCAR World Series
Champion Bobby Rahal talk about how his business and his race team is teaming
with Digital to Win!

2 Television crews interviewed Bobby Rahal, wearing a Digital embroidered
hat, in front of a huge graphic which read...  "Digital and Bobby Rahal...
1992 INDYCAR World Series Champion...Winning Through Teamwork and Technology.

The Digital Booth was the BEST for the above reasons and SPECIFICALLY because:

1. Our message focused on solving customer business problems with Business 
Consulting, Systems Integration, Multivendor Services and Leading-Edge,
open technologies.
2. Our Alpha AXP showcase and announcement completely neutralized our 
competition's message of Price/Performance while allowing us to point out the
real, DIGITAL ADVANTAGE, of solving customer business problems
3. In addition to our Alpha Showcase, we demonstrated Digitals capabilities
to offer integrated solutions for manufacturing and engineering based on our
comprehensive service, product, and application offerings.  Solutions shown
included DECfactory, best-in-class solutions applied to a manufacturing
enterprise that is totally integrated from the beginning of the order cycle
through design, planning and production of the product and integrated
product development solutions showing a customizable user interface using
Workbench Services, an integrated engineering environment, Product Data 
Management on PCs with MS-Windows and a product database solution.
4. All of this was accomplished in an exciting and unique way through a
direct analogy between how Digital helped 1992 INDYCAR Champion Bobby Rahal
win in Racing and in Business and how Digital can Apply the same principles
to help our customers Win.

Some things which were not done very well were the graphics for Alpha.  It was
difficult to find the systems because nothing stood out.  This was, however,
corrected after the first day of the show, when BOLD RED lettered "ALPHA AXP"
signage was added to highlight the Alpha units.  Also, more technical experts
    on Alpha should have been there.  At all times there were two Alpha Experts
    in the booth.  With Major announcements taking place on both coasts at
    the same time, resources were unavailable.
  
A summary of observations regarding the competition is as follows:

IBM had a combined IBM, CADAM Inc. and Dassult Systemes' exhibit with a
theme of "Partnership".  As usual, they had one of the largest booths in
the show.  Demonstrations and presentations showcased
CAD/CAM/CAE products and the strategic direction of this new alliance.
Overall traffic for the 3 days of IBM's booth, located right next to the
Digital booth, was light and I did not see a lot of excitement.  Some of
the things IBM did well included CAD/CAM/CAE customer demonstrations using 
solutions provided to Grumman, Lexmark and Techni-Products, Inc. and a
concurrent engineering laboratory.

HP, for the third year in a row, used the same booth with the same glitzy,
high tech presentation and even used the same actor.  The difference is
the presentation has been enhanced and now highlights the new HP/Apollo
9000 series 700 workstations.  The message is the same...PRICE/PERFORMANCE.
With a modified theme from Power Shift to the Power to empower, HP is
continuing to hammer on the performance and price of their systems.  Within
their booth, the had NEON lights which simply read NEW throughout their booth
showcasing primarily point solutions and their new technology.  Overall, 
they outspent Digital with their corporately funded, high tech presentation,
their larger booth and prime location, but I believe the traffic in the Digital
booth was comparable, if not greater than HPs.

Sun did an effective job of marketing at AUTOFACT, not because of what they did 
in their booth, but because of what they did outside their booth.  Sun provided
a lot of  equipment to vendors across the show. It was obvious  DEC, IBM and 
HP have not found a cost effective way to combat this strategy.  Sun also made
major announcements around a new family of servers, the SPARCcenter 2000,
an inexpensive, Color RISK system, the SPARCclassic and a low-cost graphics
workstation the SPARCstation LX.  Sun also announced the formation of the
SunIntegration services group implementing a strategy similar to HP's by
partnering with consulting and Systems Integration companies.  Overall, they
did an effective job, but their message was clearly PRICE/PERFORMANCE despite
the services announcemen.  Sun's own booth was smaller than IBM, HP and DEC
and had a somewhat plain, nothing-unusual-here look.

Silicon Graphics did not have any kind of major announcement, nothing unusual
or exciting about their booth.

A survey of the attendees done at the booth indicates the effectiveness 
Digital had in both the strategy that was employed and in its execution at
the show.

Attendees were asked to indicate what the most important attribute
in purchasing an IT solution was:

   7.9%  Price
  33.3%  Performance
   7.9%  Vendor Reputation
  50.8%  THE SOLUTION

Attendees of our main stage presentation were asked a series of questions
pertaining to our main messages, an average of 90% of the questions were
answered correctly indicating the audience listened and retained the
information they were given.



  

    re .64
    
    How many customers signed Purchase Orders?
    
    Or is that not an appropriate question?
    
    Dave

>>>Net attendance (not including exhibitors) was 9,000,
>>>Of that 9000, 3500 visited the Digital Booth!

How many "potential customers" visited _ALL_ of the booths??

3500 maybe?

Sorry....couldn't resist...

Dave W.

	re .65:

>    re .64
>    
>    How many customers signed Purchase Orders?
>    
>    Or is that not an appropriate question?

	Right. IMHO, that is not an appropriate question.

	We really can't measure everything we do by the simplest and
	easiest metric. Besides, just how easy do you think it is to
	sell computers? Cheap watches or jewellery costing under $50,
	books, videos, kitchenware, you might hope to sell by hawking
	them on a stand. Personally, I would NEVER buy even a $2K PC
	solely on the basis of what I saw at a show.

	Now, IMHO, a reasonable measure would be how many of those
	people's organisations express a firm intent to buy within
	6 months at least partly as a result of what they saw - if
	we could measure that.

	/Tom

    (c) Dow Jones News Service
    
    DEC WILL LAUNCH NEW MODEL IN ALPHA LINE


    Digital Equipment Corp. will unveil a new computer in its Alpha line,
    using a design approach that is sharply different from the company's
    past efforts. Analysts said the new system -- called a "server" because
    it links many desktop computers together in a network -- offers the
    power of a workstation or larger minicomputer, yet is designed like a
    personal computer, using standard parts and manufacturing techniques.
    Analysts also said it appears aggressively priced.

    
    Couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at a Digital Pc ad IN THE MIDDLE
    OF THE SPORTS SECTION OF USA TODAY NEWSPAPER!!  The ad introduces
    our new servers and has many technical terms in it(Eisa and Pci busses,
    Wide Scsi disks,) but also mentions "our mind-bending Alpha AXP
    processesor" and "all the slots, bays, and ports a sane person would
    want".  At the bottom it has the DIGITAL logo then PC and "Beyond the
    Box" which is listed in the small print as a service mark of Digital.
    
    My impression was it was very slick and came across well.  It's the
    first time I've ever seen a Digital ad in a general interest type area
    other than on PBS or in trade rags.  I hope we're finally learning some
    marketing lessons from our competitors and this is a sign of things
    to come...
    
    Tim

    
    I've been seeing some Digital "Beyond the Box" ads on the discovery
    channel too. Not much content, but at least it's there.
    
    Steve B.

    The Dallas Morning News has the largest circulation in Texas. There was
    no mention of Digital at all in either yesterday's nor today's paper.
    Sure looks like our announcements impressed the paper here. I wonder
    how many other large city newspapers didn't get the message printed out 
    besides Dallas.
    
    Does Digital exist outside of the Boston Globe?

    
    The WSJ did not mention a thing about the April 12th announcement.
    
    Coporate should NOT let this slide without a comment!

re.71

Send mail to Sandy Carpentier about US press issues.

My latest issue of the Microsoft Systems Journal came in a
plastic wrapper with large print reading "Which
Microprocessor Leaves Pentium And Power PC In The Dust?
See Pages 22-23."  I was pleased to see that those
pages had one of our Imagine campaign ads (cowboy version)
pushing the performance of Alpha AXP.  

   Gary

    MIPS do a fair amount of business that way. There is enough interest in
    their architecture for people to licence the basic architecture and
    build it into application-specific chips which can have specialist I/O
    and other goodies, significantly reducing the *system* cost if the
    volume is high enough to recover the additional one-off engineering costs.
    
    regards
    john

    >>the hidden cost of servers
    
    Remember the hidden cost of providing support for clients, especially
    given Mr Gates' annual dance routine with Windows. I think that many IT
    managers will be only too pleased to have tried and trusted Digital
    clusters running on powerful alphas to handle the traffic. Also, when
    IPV6 arrives it will help to have a bunch of 64-bit operating systems
    to choose from. We are in a nice position, but we have to get out and
    sell. For that we need leadership and well qualified sales/support
    staff. As for poor alpha marketing,  I don't see it. The first thing
    you need is a good product, and with AltaVista running on Alpha we have
    a world class product known to millions of computer users.   
    
    Roll on the network computer and nice easy to manage servers. Clusters
    from IBM ? Everyone knows where you go to buy clusters, get your 64-bit
    one from Digital and get the competitive advantage you need to win
    business on the internet. (And long live VMS!)
    
    Now when do I get to throw this ****** w95 box out the window. This is
    1997 :-)  
    
    ..Kevin..
             

    re: .88 "IBM and clusters"
    
    What really aggravates me about this -- and I play the game too, in a
    sales support role -- is that we say, with a sniff, that we invented
    clusters 100 years ago, and none of the other vendors have anything as
    good as OpenVMS Clusters.
    
    Why don't we have the really good parts ported to UNIX?  I don't want
    to hear that it's a bliss thing.  We could have used the design and
    re-implemented it in C -- and... *and* used on NT, too.  You say the
    VMS Cluster bits are too close to the operating system?
    
    Or are there still vestiges of "VMS is pure and UNIX is sh*t, and we
    can't allow that bastard operating system to have the really good parts
    of VMS?"
    
    Why don't we have, for sale now, more than four node support in a UNIX
    cluster?  Why can't we put the nodes further than 25 meters apart?  How
    long have had 25 KILOmeters between nodes supported in VMS clusters?
    
    Noted elsewhere in here is Rose Anne Giordano's claim yesterday that we're
    shooting for 20% of the internet market.  Well, here's IBM with the a
    seemingly limitlessly scalable cluster to support a huge network.
    
    Why don't we have best-in-class UNIX clusters?
    
    Bruce

    The current limitations in DEC UNIX clusters which you refer to 
    (4 nodes and 25meters) are based on the decision to use the memory 
    channel hardware as the cluster interconnect for the initial release.  
    
    Joe Amato
    UNIX Cluster Engineering

    Digital UNIX Clusters can operate with 8 nodes today - we showed an
    8 node cluster running at the Supercomputing show in San Diego in
    December of 1995.  Of course, these are High Performance Technical
    Computing clusters, not commercial TruCluster Production Server
    clusters (yet).  
    
    Mark
    

    >Or are there still vestiges of "VMS is pure and UNIX is sh*t, and we
    >can't allow that bastard operating system to have the really good parts
    >of VMS?"
    >
    
    OpenVMS is proprietary, we are able to make any changes in the O/S that
    we want, without regards to any test against a VMS "standard".  VMS
    Clusters are characterized by the shared file system and lock manager
    for concurrent access.  Because it has been around longer, it also has
    a more fully developed set of tools for managing a cluster, and VMS
    system managers understand how to manage them.
    
    A lot of the VMS talent that invented and developed clusters work for
    the Unix group.  We are both part of the SBU.  I don't think there has
    ever been a barrier to Digital Unix aquiring VMS cluster technology...
    the real question is: what parts of VMS clusters are reusable, and
    appropriate for a Unix kernel, and file system?
    
    Unix TruClusters, and even NT clusters may one day catch up.  But of
    course, we do have at least one more trick up our sleeves before they
    do...
    
    

>    Unix TruClusters, and even NT clusters may one day catch up.  But of
>    course, we do have at least one more trick up our sleeves before they
>    do...

Fred - I think you hinted at some surprise in this space a while back. When
will we know what is this "late-life kicker," if that's what it is? (No slight
to our bread/butter VMS intended.)

-- Steve

    Actually we gave a talk at DECUS that spelled it out pretty clear...
    and Terry Shannon has been giving broad hints about the details. 
    The code name is "Galaxy" - it answers the question of how to raise
    the bar beyond clusters.
    
    Since we have reached the stage of starting to determine the V1 product
    deliverables, I won't say much more, except to quote Terry Shannon from
    his December 4th newsletter.
    
    "...And in the "not ready for prime time" category, the OpenVMS Galaxies
    Software Architecture was the Big Winner.  Galaxies will transcend the
    current approach to clustering and SMP.  The program is funded by
    OpenVMS Development, and the initial release should coalesce in time
    to be put into service on DEC's next-generation enterprise server."
     
    

    We sell OpenVMS, Digital-Unix, and WNT at Digital...
    
    fully duplicating each OS's functionality in the other is a waste
    of company resources unless there is a clear sales and marketing
    objective in mind.
    
    Just to say that we should port OpenVMS's Cluster Features to 
    Digital Unix or NT is good on paper but the they really represent
    3 different architectures and 3 different styles of computing.
    
    Can they all run editors, software, and common applications?
    
    Of course and the best business choice is use the lowest cost
    box/OS for deployment given a set of business needs.
    
    All of our OS's have value added niches which gives them different
    markets,and different customers.  Many of the things that delight
    Unix Customers Infuriate OpenVMS customers, Many of the WNT paradyms
    drive the Unix and OpenVMS customers up the wall too.. and vice-versa.
    
    This isn't Digital saying this, it's the marketplace.
    
    Here's the good news.  Digital doesn't have to put all it's development
    eggs in one basket.. We have offerings in all three major computing
    styles that our customers are looking for and for various levels of 
    availablity we have clustering that spans across all OS's we support.
    
    The 1980's are truely over and making one OS support all of a customers
    needs are over.  Let's let OpenVMS, Digital-Unix, and WNT explore
    their unique attributes and customer bases and not sell one against 
    another in the marketplace.
    
    Let's sell our offerings against SUN, HP, IBM, and SGI ask the hard 
    questions why they only support Unix, or NT, or Mainframes but not 
    all in cooperation with each other...
    
    Every OpenVMS customer is not a Digital-Unix conversion 
    waiting to happen -- Some are, let's recognize this and make 
    money from this type of event.
    
    Every Digital-Unix Customer isn't a WNT downsizing waiting in the
    wings.. 
    
    Every new WNT customer isn't going to use WNT for every single
    computing job in their company, let's let them all know that
    Digital has OpenVMS and Digital Unix to help if they need 
    the features that the "Big Iron" represents...
    
    
    Sell the customer what he wants.. Then when they are customer,
    make sure they know about all of our OS, Network and Service 
    offerings, they might just surprise you!
    
    JMHO
    
    John W.

My May 1997 issue of PC Computing just arrived. On page 42 under NT NEWS
AND TRENDS I found:

        NT Stands for Intel
        Late last year Microsoft abandoned development of NT for systems
        that use the MIPS chip. In February, it dropped support for the
        PowerPC chips as well. That leaves only Digital Equipment's Alpha
        chip in the NT-on-RISC camp. With its emphasis on superfast
        servers, Digital is well positioned to maintain a
        high-performance niche, but the writing is on the wall: NT's
        future is overwhelmingly Intel.
        
But... but... I thought we were "Partners?" 

You and me, big guy. 

Big guy?

    While Charlie Christ's goal of 30% NT desktop system being Alpha/FX!32
    was laughable, that's not stopping DIGITAL's Alpha from owning the 64
    bit NT server space (let's start building all Alpha NT servers, even
    1000-class, as VLM-capable, eh?) and the floating-point intensive
    workstation market.  For the rest of the market that doesn't
    particularly match up well to Alpha's attributes, we can sell Intel NT.
    
    We're the only one in the industry positioned to take advantage
    of NT either way.  This was the most important thing mentioned in
    the PC Mag review, but so far it's gone unnoticed, even by our own
    VTX LIVEWIRE piece.
    .02 Kratz 

    And stick labels on every unit that say "VLM inside" or "VLM today!" or 
    "64bit NT-VLM ready" and use it every ad!

We'll have to spend a lot of money before VLM is well understood by the 
market.

Dave.

> We'll have to spend a lot of money before VLM is well understood by the 
> market.
    
    Not clear it has to be understood to be of marketing value.
    
    ...tom

RE: .100

	.101 is right. You only have to make people think they
	need it.

	How much you want to bet that Digital will let this slide
	and Intel will have "invented" it when Merced comes out?

							mike

RE: last few:

Never underestimate the ability to convince people they should buy
something, that they don't really need. 

Take MMX, for example. How many people actually understand what these 
instructions do, yet, Intel's got the average Joe and Sally thinking, "I
gotta have it!". They've been convinced that it makes their computer run
faster, even though most applications aren't ready to take advantage of
the new instruction set. But, when I've talked to first-time PC
shoppers, recently, they all want MMX.  Non-negotiable. Gotta have it.  
Demand creation is half the battle.

I could guess that AMD and CYRIX were forced to counter the onslaught,
with MMX versions on their own chips, only because of the marketing
power of Intel. Think about what would have happened if DIGITAL
announced the new Motion Video Instructions (MVI), on the 21164PC, and Intel
didn't have MMX. You likely wouldn't have seen all the other chip vendors
scrambling to come up with their own MVI extensions, eh?

 - Meir

p.s. Not slamming MVI, here - I think it's great.

    That's half the story. The MMX chips *do* run (most) existing apps
    somewhat faster, regardless of the new instructions which nobody uses
    yet, because they have more on-chip cache. Let's not confuse facts with
    marketing :-)

>  <<< Note 2220.104 by BBPBV1::WALLACE "john wallace @ bbp. +44 860 675093" >>>
>                     -< MMX: instructions plus marketing >-
>
>    That's half the story. 

And the other half is the very reasonable expectation that MMX machines
and the code to use them will be mainstream in 6 months and that 
if you're going to buy a computer today, pushing the obsolescence 
line back a few months is a good idea.

But my next machine will still be a(nother) Macintosh.

- tom]

RE: .102

>>	How much you want to bet that Digital will let this slide
>>	and Intel will have "invented" it when Merced comes out?

	Yep... and they (Intel will do it).  At the AIM/Unix show in 
	NT last fall, during the AIM awards ceremony, an HP type made
	the statement (paraphrased) "HP - bring 64 bit Unix to the
	market".  Luckily one of our people followed the HP speaker
	and "Wished them well in their efforts to mature 64 bit unix"
	(alos a paraphrase - it was a lot sharper).


RE: 103 and 104

>>Take MMX, for example. How many people actually understand what these 
>>instructions do, yet, Intel's got the average Joe and Sally thinking, "I
>>gotta have it!".

>>    That's half the story. The MMX chips *do* run (most) existing apps
>>    somewhat faster, regardless of the new instructions which nobody uses
>>    yet, because they have more on-chip cache. Let's not confuse facts with
>>    marketing :-)

	103 still holds though.  Yes it may run *any* application a few
	percent faster - but does any "average joe" need a new machine for
	that small a gain?

.02
- norm

RE: .106

	Norm, it's rarely about need. It's about want and desire. Intel
	have fanned the flames of want and desire with MMX. I personally
	don't need an MMX chip, but do you think I'd buy anything but one
	next time around? Probably not.

	Digital (or whatever the hell we are calling ourselves nowadays)
	needs to create want and desire for:

	VLM
	NT Clusters
	Alpha

	in order to some out of this alive.

	Creating Want and Desire is Marketings job.

							mike

    May or June will mark 18 months since Intel shipped the
    200MHz Pentium PRO.  (Depending on how you count.)
    
    I'm sure Moore is very aware that Intel probably won't be following
    his law this year.
    
    								-mr. bill

re.many.

There's a great deal of difference between creating desire for MMX on a PC 
and VLM in a mid-range box! I can't speak for the world but in the UK 
customers have to justify their purchase of highly-configured computers!

Dave.

	We can quibble all we want about what we should or
	shouldn't do in each country, but the bottom line is we
	are NOT doing enough TODAY and what we ARE doing is not
	working!

	We must fix this.

							mike

Part 1
                      WHY THE FASTEST CHIP DIDN'T WIN

Digital's superspeedy Alpha outraces the Pentium. But so far,
it can't crack the mass market

Last summer, executives from Digital Equipment Corp. fanned out 
across the country. They traveled light, carrying the latest samples 
of the company's powerful Alpha computer chip encased in plastic 
sleeves the size of credit cards. Their mission: To talk computer 
makers, including Compaq Computer Corp. and IBM, into using the chip 
as the engine for speedy new machines.

But after 10 months on the road, it's beginning to look more like 
mission impossible. While Alpha boasts bragging rights as the world's 
fastest microprocessor--twice the speed of Intel Corp.'s popular 
Pentium chip--Compaq and IBM just aren't interested. Alpha's raw 
computing power, they say, isn't enough to make up for its minuscule 
market share and lack of software. ''What's the gain for the pain?'' 
asks Mike Perez, vice-president of Compaq's server-products division. 
The leading PC maker estimates it would have to spend $50 million 
just to retool its manufacturing plant for Alpha. ''Searching for 
absolute performance may be an interesting technical exercise,'' he 
says, ''but it's not where we want to be from a broad business 
standpoint.''

WHITTLED AWAY. After five years, Digital executives are still 
knocking on doors and still coming away almost empty-handed. They 
insist that Alpha's big break is just around the corner. But the 
chances of that happening are getting slimmer by the day. Despite 
spending an estimated $2.5 billion to develop and promote Alpha, the 
chip ranks dead last in market share with less than 1% of the $18 
billion microprocessor market, vs. Intel's 92%. And with new 
generations of lower-cost chips due this year, including Intel's 
Pentium II in May, Alpha's performance advantage is being whittled 
away.

It couldn't happen at a worse time. The early sales spurt of 
Digital's own Alpha computers has slowed to a crawl. On Apr. 17, when 
Digital reported revenues for the third quarter ended Mar. 31, sales 
of Alpha computers grew an anemic 3%--the third straight quarter of 
single-digit increases. Digital stock is taking a beating, down 32%, 
from 38 on Jan. 30 to 25 1/2 on Apr. 15. Says analyst George Weiss of 
the Gartner Group Inc.: ''If Alpha does not generate volume soon, the 
question arises: What is the Digital advantage and why are they 
blowing it?''

Good question. In an industry so thoroughly shaped by 
bigger-better-faster technology, how could a superior computer chip 
fail to catch on? Clearly, Digital takes the rap for its own 
missteps. But behind Alpha's poor market showing lies a broader 
business lesson: New technologies, no matter how whizzy, have an 
increasingly tough time finding acceptance against well-entrenched 
competitors, like Intel. Despite the quick-change nature of the 
computer industry, a huge installed base can be an impenetrable 
fortress.

HESITATION. Not that Digital didn't contribute to its weak Alpha 
showing. BUSINESS WEEK interviews with current and former Alpha 
executives show the company hesitated backing the chip in its early 
days--a crucial error--before charging full speed ahead. And the 
company squandered a performance lead through a series of other 
blunders, ranging from a lack of software to take advantage of the 
chip's speed to internal haggling over pricing.

Digital sees it differently. CEO Robert B. Palmer admits Alpha has 
not lived up to the company's original hopes, but he insists its best 
days are ahead. As a sign of the chip's viability, he points to the 
$7 billion worth of Alpha computers that Digital has sold since their 
introduction in 1992. What's more, Palmer is proud of the fact he has 
continued investing in Alpha, keeping it technically tip-top for five 
years, despite company losses totaling $5.4 billion over the same 
period.

There is no question Alpha came at a critical time. When Digital 
launched the chip on Feb. 25, 1992, the company was losing $8 million 
a day. Its reputation as a provider of world-class technology was 
sinking fast. So Digital execs seized on Alpha as the core of their 
comeback plan for a wide range of machines, from powerful PCs to 
large-scale computers.

But even before Alpha hit the market, Digital fumbled. The company 
had shown off early versions of the chip at an industry conference in 
February, 1991, and engineers at Apple Computer Inc. were impressed. 
Apple was in the market for a new chip supplier, and Alpha looked 
promising.

In late June, John Sculley, then Apple's CEO, invited Kenneth H. 
Olsen, Digital's founder and president, to dinner. Sculley had a 
proposition: Apple's Macintosh computers were starting to run out of 
gas, and he wanted to do a complete redesign with Alpha at the heart 
of the new Macs.

But Olsen had doubts about Alpha. His unshakable faith in the VAX 
computer, which had turned Digital into IBM's most formidable 
competitor in the 1980s, made him reluctant to phase it out too soon 
in favor of Alpha. Olsen asked a team of Digital's top engineers to 
extend the computer's design for another generation--and he rejected 
Sculley's proposal.

A few months later, Apple announced that its new Macs would run on 
the PowerPC chip, a competing design by IBM and Motorola Inc. Sculley 
says one Digital director later told him that Digital's board was 
''distressed that nothing came of these discussions and that Digital 
lost a great opportunity.'' The Alpha faction at Digital was 
crestfallen. ''Ken did not want the future of the company riding on 
Alpha,'' says William R. Demmer, a former vice-president of Digital's 
Alpha and VAX businesses who retired in 1995. Too bad. With Apple as 
a customer, Digital would have had 3.4% of the microprocessor market, 
although a distant No.2 to Intel. Olsen did not respond to repeated 
requests for an interview.

Part 2 - From this week's BusinessWeek

MEMORY HOG. By late July, 1992, Olsen's misgivings about Alpha ceased 
to be an issue. The company had ended its fiscal year with a $2.1 
billion loss, and Digital's board asked the 66-year-old founder to 
step down. His replacement was Bob Palmer, a Texan who had spent the 
bulk of his career in computer chips, most recently as head of 
manufacturing.

With Olsen gone, Digital's senior management quickly settled on a 
strategy of trying to license the Alpha design. ''We had to get a 
major chip player to accept Alpha and drive it into the  
marketplace,'' says John F. Smith, then Digital's senior 
vice-president of operations and now president of PerSeptive 
Biosystems Inc., a pharmaceutical equipment maker. Smith and other 
Digital execs didn't think they had a chance persuading computer 
companies to use Alpha--unless a big chipmaker was behind it.

So Smith went to the biggest maker of chips in the business--Intel. 
In the fall of 1992, Smith called Andrew S. Grove, CEO and president 
of Intel. Grove was well aware of the technical merits of Alpha, but 
it did not take him long to pass on licensing the chip. Adopting 
Alpha, even as a high-end addition to Intel's commodity business, 
would require a costly overhaul of Intel's design and manufacturing 
processes. ''We didn't want to branch out to an incompatible deal,'' 
Grove says.

Nor did Texas Instruments, Motorola, and NEC. So Digital set out for 
even bigger game--Microsoft. Digital executives were pushing for 
Microsoft to adapt its next-generation software, Windows NT, to 
Alpha. Palmer met with Microsoft CEO William H. Gates III and agreed 
to make NT a central part of Digital's computer business. In return, 
Microsoft agreed to release a version of NT for Alpha at the same 
time it came out with versions for Intel and the MIPS chip designed 
by Silicon Graphics Inc.

Digital executives were elated. They constructed their business plans 
for fiscal 1993 around the assumption that NT would quickly drive 
Alpha into high-volume markets, including corporate PCs. That meant 
pouring tremendous resources into fine-tuning Alpha to work with 
Microsoft's software. But in early 1993, when Digital engineers 
eagerly loaded test versions of NT onto their computers, it quickly 
became apparent that the software needed far too much computer memory 
to run on a typical PC--or even a $5,000 Alpha machine. That put NT 
beyond the reach of the mass market that Digital had been counting on 
for Alpha.

A mad scramble erupted inside Digital. Palmer ordered a crash program 
to bring out Alpha computers running a stripped-down version of 
Digital's Unix operating system, a rival to NT. But many customers 
doubted Digital's commitment to Unix would last once Microsoft solved 
its NT problems. Revenue fell, and Digital posted a $224 million loss 
that year. By focusing Alpha on NT, Digital ''lost three years in the 
market,'' says Edward J. Zander, president of Sun Microsystems 
Computer Corp.

Still, the future of Alpha--and Digital--increasingly depended on NT. 
And Digital's relationship with Microsoft was growing more complex. 
In mid-1993, Digital engineers looking into early versions of NT 
noticed that some portions of the program bore a striking resemblance 
to an advanced operating system called Mica that Digital had 
developed, but canceled in 1988. Mica was the brainchild of Dave 
Cutler, a former Digital software star who joined Microsoft in 1988 
and was now the chief architect of NT.

Palmer decided that Digital had a legal claim against Microsoft. But, 
insiders say, instead of filing suit, Palmer chose to use the threat 
of legal action to spur Microsoft into improving Alpha's prospects. 
Microsoft execs won't comment, saying it concerns legal matters. 
Still, Palmer's gambit appears to have worked. By the spring of 1995 
the two companies hammered out details of a broad agreement for 
Digital to provide NT network installation services for Microsoft. 
Announced with great fanfare by Digital in August, 1995, the alliance 
included payments by Microsoft estimated at $65 million to $100 
million to help train Digital NT technicians.

On the surface, that appeared to help boost Digital into a prime spot 
for milking NT's strong growth. Since October, Microsoft has also 
dropped its support of two rival chips--the PowerPC, made by IBM and 
Motorola, and MIPS. But this crucial alliance may now be fraying. On 
Mar. 19, Microsoft announced a joint marketing and services agreement 
with Digital's archrival, Hewlett-Packard Co. The Palo Alto (Calif.) 
company will hawk NT in large corporations--the role Digital once  
held exclusively.

In retrospect, former Digital executives say, the company would have 
had more success if it had lowered the price of Alpha computers. By 
late 1994, engineers had found a way to deliver a $4,995 
''AlphaStation'' aimed at the fast-growing workstation market. But a 
clash broke out among Digital's senior management because of fears 
that this could damage the 50%-plus gross margins Digital enjoyed on 
high-end computers, one of the few bright spots in its gloomy 
financial outlook.

''SPLIT PERSONALITY.'' Digital's PC Business Unit was none too happy 
about the prospect of low-cost Alpha machines, either. Execs there 
lobbied against it, saying it would undercut prospects for building a 
big business around Intel-based PCs. When the Alpha- Station finally 
hit the market, it bore a $7,995 price tag. ''Digital has always had 
a split personality,'' says Enrico Pesatori, who left Digital last 
summer after the PC Business Unit he headed suffered continuing 
losses. ''Every Intel server sold means an Alpha server that is not 
sold.''

Today, Digital's Intel-based machines running NT outsell its Alpha 
computers 9 to 1 in the high-volume market for low-cost servers, says 
the Gartner Group. That's because software for NT has to be 
specifically tuned for Digital's Alpha chip, a task few software 
developers are interested in taking on given the small volume of 
Alpha-based computers. Even longtime Digital customers, such as Toys 
'R' Us Inc., are building NT networks linking thousands of locations 
on Intel computers instead of Alphas. ''The biggest reason is the 
lack of software,'' says Matthew J. Lombardi, vice-president for 
information technology at Toys 'R' Us.

Of course, Digital is more than Alpha and Intel-based computers. The 
company, for example, is expected to post revenues of $5.8 billion in 
services this year, while networking and computer storage systems 
should contribute roughly $1.4 billion. But it is Alpha that 
distinguishes Digital from its competitors, offering the company its 
best hope for returning to star status.

And Alpha's best opportunity, Palmer insists, lies in the future. In 
mid-March, the company introduced a low-cost version of the Alpha 
chip priced from $295 to $495--some $100 less than its previous 
minimum price. That makes Alpha affordable, for the first time, in 
PCs costing less than $2,600. Digital is hoping that this, combined 
with a Samsung Electronics Co. alliance to make and market Alpha, 
will help the chip crack the volume computer market. ''Alpha will 
carry Digital for 20 years while other chip technologies have fallen 
by the wayside,'' Palmer says.

A couple of years ago, he predicted one in five computers running 
Microsoft's Windows NT software would be powered by Alpha. The number 
today is closer to 1 in 20, according to the Gartner Group. So far, 
though, only 27 small companies have plans for low-cost Alpha 
computers, the largest being German PC maker Vobis Microcomputer. 
Vobis tried to launch an Alpha workstation in the German market four 
years ago but abandoned the campaign after selling fewer than 500 
machines in two months. Vobis CEO Gert Huegler, though, is now 
willing to give Alpha a second chance because, he says, it delivers 
better performance than Intel. Also key: Digital has an answer to the 
software shortage--so-called ''translator'' software that enables 
Alpha to run programs written for Intel chips.

Even so, Huegler figures that Vobis will be lucky if sales of the 
$4,000 Alpha machines amount to 5% of the company's overall revenues 
of $1.3 billion. And if it doesn't--so what, he says. ''We can switch 
it on or switch it off,'' Huegler adds.

Unless more computer makers start flipping the switch on Alpha, 
Digital may wind up with the world's fastest microprocessor and the 
smallest installed base of customers. By Paul C. Judge in Boston, 
with Andy Reinhardt in San Francisco and Gary McWilliams in Houston
                      -------------------------------
                               RELATED ITEMS
            TABLE: Not Exactly the Passing Lane
            TABLE: Speed Isn't Everything
Copyright 1997, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights 
reserved.

    
    Boy, it is a real treat to see real marketing kicking in and going on all
    cylinders.. previous article assumes the fight is over, and it is only
    just begun !
    
    At a time when the Intel architecture is peaking out and
    Customers are faced with massive server recentralization, budget
    and headcount cutbacks, thin client with FAT servers looming, Intel 
    still has the clout to convince the trade rag's that deploying more 
    Intel 32 bit based servers are the way of the future.
    
    Now thats marketing ...
    
    Customer IS dept's are being told that whatever they deploy better work 
    for 18-24 months. Because of this and the small price difference, these
    Cust's are deploying P166-PPRO 200 desktops with 24-32MB of memory.
    
    Am I crazy, or does deploying servers that are roughly the same speed
    as the current clients being deployed sound a little flawed ? 
    
    Lets look underneath the fluff ..
    
    - Merced (P7) has been delayed until 1999 at the earliest. Intel is only 
    committing to release it before the year 2000 (press release). This does 
    not include the time to get NT ported to 64bit, or any app's such as SQL 
    Server to be ported from Alpha.
    
    - Merced will run existing app's in "compatibility mode", but they
    quote performance numbers based on IA-64 based app's. Ok, so even with
    HW and brilliant porting folks, we are looking at the year 2001+ for
    native IA-64 app's (assuming no slips). Competition will be 900-1Ghz
    Alpha's based on EV6-7 architectures, so I would say the P7 folks
    have their work cut out for them ..
    
    - Klamath (Pentium II) was delayed due to performance being worse (in
    certain area's) than existing PPro's ..now not expected to ship in qty  
    until fall '97.
    
    - rather than announce that the follow on to Klamath (Deschutes) has
    been delayed a second time (no ship until Sept 98), they announce "new"
    Pentium Pro's with extra cache and bus technologies ie. tweaks of
    existing technologies. Quote from
    http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?970426.epenpro.htm
    
    "The processor is intended to tide the market over while Intel prepares 
    its Deschutes chip. This processor, which has a four-way capability, 
    has been delayed a second time and is now expected to ship in volume in 
    September 1998, sources said. "
   
    Sooo... to quickly(?) summarize, expect more rapid announcements of
    "new" Intel cpu's and technologies.. all of which are designed to mask
    the fact that each new one is only delivering 10-15% improvements over
    existing technologies...
    
    Bottom line, we need to start marketing Alpha strengths (emphasize
    NT5 beta with encryption and VLM issues) and quit getting depressed on 
    all of these Intel announcements.. 
    
    Btw, in case there are those that think this is just a ranting Alpha
    nut, check out :
    
    http://www.pcweek.com/opinion/0414/14chip.html (PC Week editorial)
    http://www.heise.de/ct/english/9705154/ (European analysis)
    
    After looking at these 2 articles, re-read the recent Intel
    announcement at : 
    http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?970426.epenpro.htm
    
    Anyway, enough of my rambling - DIGITAL does have an excellent Intel
    story as well for those Customers who feel safe with Intel. 
    
    However, IMHO, safe for a Customer is looking at where the technology 
    requirements will be a year from now - not at what they are now. 
    Especially if your HW decisions need to carry you a year beyond next year. 
    
    Now, if we could only convince the market of this.
    
    Regards,
    
    / Kerry
    

>>Now, if we could only convince the market of this.

Actually, we need to convince the people running this comapany that we
need to convince the market.  I'm convinced,BP still believes he doesn't 
need to shout Alpha's benefits from every rooftop he can find.

Until we get some serious marketing people into the uppermost reaches of
management (like CEO), Alpha will never get beyond the miniscule market
share it has.  It really doesn't matter how superior it is.

The days of the VAX being _the_ solution are gone.  Now it is we who need 
to regain the market.

Brad

| Until we get some serious marketing people into the uppermost reaches of
| management (like CEO), Alpha will never get beyond the miniscule market
| share it has.  It really doesn't matter how superior it is.

Not that I know Bruce very well, but I'd like to cut him a little bit of
slack. Even though we desperately need it, I think it is inhumane to expect
miracles in just a month or two. I would imagine that Q4 is largely a done
deal. After all, it takes time for new slogans and campaigns to result in
real leads that then generate real orders. I'd say that Q1 will be the proof
of any serious improvements.

>Per

Re .115

I meant nothing negative towards Bruce.  I agree, he needs time.

But he also needs many other marketing oriented folks around him, and it would
sure help if the guy above him had a clue about our markets.

Brad