| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 2497.1 | a sad note | NRSTA2::HORGAN | a moment of silence please | Fri Jan 14 1994 12:59 | 6 |
| According to mail David died last night.
I would suggest a moment of prayer (for those so inclined) for
David's passing, and for support for his family would be appropriate.
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| 2497.2 | Dave Stone died last night | CTHQ::COADY | | Fri Jan 14 1994 13:32 | 3 |
|
I hear that David Stone died last night .....
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| 2497.3 | From Bob Palmer | WRKSYS::REISERT | Jim Reisert, AD1C | Sat Jan 15 1994 15:31 | 35 |
|
From: NAME: Bob Palmer @MLO
FUNC: PRESIDENT AND CEO
TEL: 223-6600 <PALMER.BOB AT PNDVUEA1 at MLMAIL at MLO>
Date: 14-Jan-1994
Posted-date: 14-Jan-1994
Precedence: 1
Subject: David Stone 1
To: See Below
PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE THROUGHOUT YOUR ORGANIZATION
As some of you may already know, David Stone passed away last night after
a struggle with a protracted illness. While David left Digital over a year
ago, I felt it appropriate to send this note because his ideas and person
influenced so many people during his 22 years at Digital. I know that
there are many at Digital who share my feelings of profound regret at
David's passing.
Funeral arrangements are being made. His wife, Pat, asks that no flowers
be sent. In lieu of flowers, she asks that donations be sent, "in memorial
to David L. Stone" to Compassion International, P.O. Box 7000, Colorado
Springs, Colorado 80933. David and Pat have supported this group for a
number of years in its mission of supporting needy children around the
world.
For those who would like to send a note of condolence, Pat's address is:
Pat Stone
115 Stonefence Road
Bernardsville, NJ 07924
Bob
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| 2497.4 | Services & Donations | WRKSYS::REISERT | Jim Reisert, AD1C | Sat Jan 15 1994 15:32 | 30 |
|
From: TNSG::NIEDERHAUSER "Orson Niederhauser...381-2838...ZKO1-3/B10 14-Jan-1994 1321" 14-JAN-1994 13:29:39.56
To: @SW_EXTENDED_STAFF,MR4DEC::CASWELL,RDVAX::MURPHY,GVPROD::MERITTO
CC: MEMIT::MUELLER,MTS$::"mlo::marc chardon",NIEDERHAUSER
Subj: David Stone - Services & Donations
Tuesday, January 18, 1994:
Visiting hours: 2 - 4 p.m.
Gallaway & Crane Funeral Home
101 South Finley Ave.
Basking Ridge, N.J.
(908) 766-0250
Memorial Service: 7:30 p.m.
Millington Babtist Church
520 King George Road
Basking Ridge, N.J.
(908) 647-0594
In lieu of flowers, David requested a donation could be made to:
Compassion International
"In memory of DLS"
Compassion International
P.O. Box 7000
Colorado Springs, CO. 80933
Orson
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| 2497.5 | David Stone R.I.P. | GVPROD::MEYER | Nick, DTN 7-821-4172 | Sun Jan 16 1994 10:59 | 4 |
| At an Ultreya meeting on Friday evening in the American Church in
Geneva, Marietta Dewey mentioned that Pat Stone had rung her during the
night to let her know that David hast passed away.
|
| 2497.6 | A Letter To David and A Reply | SOJU::SLATER | Bill Slater - 603-884-4953 (DTN 264) | Tue Jan 18 1994 19:21 | 135 |
|
As a tribute to David, I would like to share the following letter
I sent him in July shortly after I discovered he was taken ill with
pancreatic cancer. His reply, which he sent via the net, is attached.
It speaks well about what a great human being David was. Note the
fondness which he expresses for Digital people.
A great human being and visionary has left us. All of us who had ever
been exposed to him were better people for having known him.
Sadly,
Bill Slater
PS: Permission is granted in advance to forward this.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 13, 1993 Bill Slater
5 New Haven Drive # 308
Nashua, New Hampshire 03063
Work - 603-884-4953
Home - 603-880-4855
David Stone
115 Stone Fence Road
Bernardsville, New Jersey 07924
Dear David,
I learned from the Digital Notes Conference about 6 weeks ago that you had
become very ill since you left Digital and moved to New Jersey to work with
AT&T.
Though you and I never met, I have heard you speak in person and on DVN
Broadcasts, and I have read your articles about software technology. I have
the upmost respect and admiration for your technical, people, and
communication abilities. I was very sad and worried for Digital when I heard
the news about your leaving us back in November. I was all the sadder when
I learned of your illness.
I work in an area at Digital which delivers services for client/server
projects and WINDOWS NT. My office is located in Merrimack, NH.
I wanted to take the time to send you a note to let you know how much you
have inspired me as a computer professional. Since coming to Digital in
June of 1990, it was YOU and your messages which gave me the greatest
pride and assurance that Digital's software technology is world-class and
in sync with the market. Your messages about the Information Appliance
concept and the MIS Resource "Black Box" are right on the money, and
indicate a clear understanding of software and the problems it solves for
less technical people. I took pages and pages of notes during your talk
to the IM Symposium in person back in January 1992 in Nashua, NH. Those
notes served to help me keep up with issues affecting my career and
the issues surrounding those who are affected by our work. As always, your
message was inspiring because of the content, as well as your humanness and
your passion about the profession.
For your scrapbook of "Digital memories", I am enclosing some pictures of
you from that January 1992 IM Symposium where you decided to model the
"NO ORACLE" tee shirt that one of the audience members gave you. Doing things
like putting on this tee shirt over your dress shirt with your suit endeared
you to your colleagues more than you will ever know.
I am thankful that I was able to work at Digital while you were here and that
I was on the receiving end of your inspiring talks and messages. If you ever
need a friend (and a fan) to talk to, I would welcome a call at one of the
numbers listed above. My card is also enclosed for your files.
God bless you and your family. You are in my thoughts and prayers.
Sincerely yours,
Bill Slater
PS: Because I know you love the computer career profession I am enclosing
a set of notes I took at the 1993 Borland Conference which was held in
May in San Francisco. I have been a Borland software fan since 1985
and do a lot of PC computing at home.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Stone's Reply Via E-mail:
From: US2RMC::"dlstone@attmail.com" "David L. Stone" 21-JUL-1993 07:02:45.97
To: soju::slater
CC:
Subj: Your note - July 13th
Bill -
Thanks very much for your very supportive (and flattering) letter. I
remember the "Oracle Tee shirt" moment at the IM symposium well. A great
audience of people to communicate with! It was people like you (and those)
that made it very hard for me to leave Digital -- I wish you all the best of
luck in the "new world".
I talked with Mike Thurk this AM (as part of a Digital Sales Call on me in my
new job at AT&t) and caught up with some of the current Digital News; lots of
things going on.
Both Pat and I are doing quite well. I am working about half time, which
strangely enough may be even more productive than full time for certain types
of activities, since it absolutely requires that you get your priorities
straight. The AT&T people (most old Bell Labs folks in my business) are great
colleagues and we are fortunate to have a privileged market position at the
moment in many areas. It will be interesting to see the role of software
increase here (as it was to see it at Digital).
Again -- thanks for thinking of me and for sending the note, pictures and
Borland conference review.
Sincerely Yours
David
% ====== Internet headers and postmarks (see DECWRL::GATEWAY.DOC) ======
% Received: by us2rmc.bb.dec.com; id AA29378; Wed, 21 Jul 93 07:00:32 -0400
% Received: by inet-gw-1.pa.dec.com; id AA29513; Wed, 21 Jul 93 04:02:21 -0700
% Message-Id: <9307211102.AA29513@inet-gw-1.pa.dec.com>
% From: dlstone@attmail.com (David L. Stone )
% Date: 20 Jul 93 21:25:21 GMT
% To: soju::slater
% Received: from dlstone by attmail; Wed Jul 21 10:58:38 GMT 1993
% Subject: Your note - July 13th
% Content-Type: Text
|
| 2497.7 | Notes From The Remarks Of A True Visionary -- 1992 | SOJU::SLATER | Bill Slater - 603-884-4953 (DTN 264) | Wed Jan 19 1994 20:52 | 152 |
|
Greetings Colleagues:
Attached is an excerpt of a trip report I did two years ago on the
Digital IM Symposium which was held in January 1992. This report is
significant because it contains David Stone's comments. His assessment
of where the software industry was and where it was going were very
revealing. Despite the fact that this information is now two years old,
most of it is as relevent as this month's computer industry magazines.
I hope you can appreciate David Stone's insights a little better after
reading this.
Regards,
Bill
PS: Permission is granted in advance to re-post and/or distribute this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date : February 5, 1992
To : The Boss
From : Bill Slater
Subject : Trip Report - The 1992 DB/TP/EU IM Symposium
I attended the 1992 DB/TP/EU IM Symposim from 1/19 - 1/24 in Nashua, NH.
This was my second DB/TP/EU IM Symposium, and found it to be a very
informative and rewarding experience. I mailed back 28 pounds of papers
and handouts to my home and I plan to disseminate these to our group
as soon as I receive them.
Though I have included a copious amount of comments from the Digital
software VP, David Stone, I think you will find about 90% worth reading
and thinking about. Stone is not only a very powerful, intelligent man
at Digital, the man is an extremely articulate visionary, who is very
mindful of where we are, where we are hopefully headed, and all the
factors which influence our profession.
The highlight of the conference was David Stone's address to the entire
group on Wednesday morning. Stone as you know is the VP of Software at
Digital. He spoke for about 30 minutes and answered questions for about
30 minutes. Some of the more interesting things that Stone covered were
1) that Digital is "unifying our software product strategy", 2) that he
has "taken heat" for supporting Rdb/VMS, but continues to do so because
he believes in it, 3) we must realize that "nobody in their right mind
really wants to buy wants to buy things like a database management system,
rather, they want to buy the things it can do". Another interesting
concept that he described is the fact that more and more senior level
managers are viewing the "product" that our profession produces as the
"information utility" which is something that they want to be able to just
"plug in to" just as you can take an appliance or electrical device and
plug it into the electric wall socket of a building. Stone also said that
often when he describes a software package to Jack Smith and other members
of the executive committee, their response will be, "Okay, what side of the
plug does it go on?", which is to infer, from what perspective to I view
this?
Stone also had some other comments that were both visionary and that will
definitely have an effect on how we do business. He had just been in the
executive meeting in which drastic measures to make Digital profitable
again were being discussed. He said that responsibility for all Digital
software had just been placed under him. This include VAX/VMS. He also
told us of plans to have a "Unified Product Strategy" because the upper
level corporate executives have decided that we have too many small products
which are not as well-focused as the main products we have, and the cost
of maintenance and development of these products is "nickel and diming us
to death".
Other Stone comments from the Symposium :
Due to "Commoditization" (hardware and software becoming a commodity
that can be purchased from the lowest bidder), unless you have a
significant market share for a given software product, you will NOT
be profitable.
A new concept in understanding software is the category of what is
known as "middleware". This would include any package that is between
the operating system and the actual application package you are running
such as communications software, database management systems, SQL
Services, etc.
Time to design, develop, and market a new software product is VERY
critical. Why? Because statistically speaking, the life-time for
the high margin profit on a new software package is four years at
a maximum, but in some cases it is as short as two years.
He recommended that we all read the article, "The Computerless
Computer Company" in the June 91 issue of Harvard Business Review.
He said that many of the trends which are discussed in that article
are already taking place in the computer industry, and that many
of the concepts he was covering can be found in that article.
From a hardware perspective, we lost money in FY 91.
The profit margin on operating systems in FY 91 was 30%.
The profit margin for layered software products in FY 91
In the past we were using other software companies to leverage our
hardware sales. Now we must use become profitable using own software
and sales strategies.
Microsoft is a real leader in software - they are a virtual monopoly
in the PC world, and they are now the largest software company in the
world. We would do well to study how they did it and what makes them
successful.
The top 10 Digital software products, in terms of sales volume, make
50% of the software revenue for the company.
People don't want to buy drills, they want holes. If I could just sell
holes, I could put all the drill-makers out of business.
Customers want shared risk, with the computer vendor sharing part of the
risk of failing.
Nature abhors a profit.
Under capitalism, your competition controls you.
In 1991 the big trend was toward "open systems".
In 1992 the big trend will be toward "object-oriented" programming and
databases.
Ken Olsen told Stone that, "The most important corporate asset in this
company is the Field Consultant Community.
Software Across Three Decades
________________________________________________________________________
Category 70s 80s 90s
Trend Islands of Networked, Departmental Open Computing
Automation Systems and PCs (Standards)
Most Impor- Efficiency Effectiveness Flexibility
tant Issue
Emphasized Faster, automate What's the right thing Accelerate
existing process to do innovation
-------------------------------- End Of Stone's Notes --------------------------
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| 2497.8 | HP's embraced the Info Utility vision | POWDML::LKENNEDY | time for cool change ... | Fri Jan 21 1994 10:52 | 9 |
| ... and HP has embraced the Information Utility vision as an organizing
principle for its own self-promotion. Lew Platt of HP professes this
vision publicly every chance he gets, while using it internally to
keep people focused on the differences in behavior to support commodity
businesses and systems businesses. Though customers will likely
attribute the Information Utility paradigm to HP rather than to David
Stone (as they do 'commercial Unix*' and 'client server computing')
at least it relieves us of doing a massive education campaign.
/L
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| 2497.9 | Memorial Service for David Stone | GYPSIE::MUELLER | | Fri Feb 04 1994 20:31 | 32 |
| From: GYPSIE::MUELLER 4-FEB-1994 16:22:53.05
To: BOOKIE::EPPES
CC: MUELLER
Subj: Please forward!!!
***********************************************
* PLEASE FORWARD THROUGHOUT YOUR ORGANIZATION *
***********************************************
Memorial Service for David Stone
As you may know, David Stone passed away on Thursday, January 13th. Many
people who knew David from his years here at Digital were not able to
attend the services held in his memory in New Jersey the week after his
death.
To give David's friends and acquaintances from Digital an opportunity to
say good-bye, there will be a memorial service for him on Friday, February
18th, 1994 from 3:00-4:30 in the Spitbrook facility in Nashua, New
Hampshire. His wife, Pat, his brother Sandy, and his daughter Katherine
will join us.
Please send mail to MEMIT::MUELLER by Friday, February 11th if you wish to
attend. We would like to hold the service in a more personal setting, and
have booked the Babbage Auditorium. However, we have also provisionally
booked a room at the Sheraton Tara in Nashua in case the Babbage turns out
to be too small for the number of people wishing to attend. Mail will
be sent out on Monday, February 14th, to let those planning to attend know
where it is being held.
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