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| Title: | The Digital way of working |
|
| Moderator: | QUARK::LIONEL ON |
|
| Created: | Fri Feb 14 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 5321 |
| Total number of notes: | 139771 |
2512.0. "1993 Borland Conference Trip Report" by SOJU::SLATER (Synchronicity - It's Everywhere!) Tue May 25 1993 20:08
/\ Horizontal Applications and Services PSC
/ \ Digital Equipment Corporation
IIII
/....\
|:\_:| FROM: WILLIAM F. SLATER, III
/ :..: \ DEPT: HAS PSC
| | ENET: SOJU::SLATER
| || | M/S: MKO2-1/J12
DTN: 264-4953
DATE: May 24, 1993
TO : Digital Employees
SUBJECT : Trip Report - 1993 Borland Conference In San Diego, CA
Dear Colleagues:
I just returned recently from the Borland Conference in San
Diego last week. It was one of the greatest technical events
that I have ever attended.
My trip report which I submitted to my management is attached.
It is long, but for the sake of new computer technology and being
in touch with the high tech market, it is really worth reading.
If you have questions and/or comments, please advise.
Your fellow Digital employee,
Bill
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
By William F. Slater, III
Digital Equipment Corportaion
Merrimack, NH
DTN 264-4953
SOJU::SLATER
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I attended the 1993 Borland International Conference in San Diego, from
May 16th - 19th.
The conference consisted of over 200 technical presentations presented by
experts in the following technical areas: client/server, INTERBASE,
PARADOX for DOS, PARADOX for WINDOWS, dBase for DOS, dBase for WINDOWS,
C++, PASCAL, etc.
Technical Panel Discussion - Server Database Panel
As you know, I was not only there to attend technical sessions, but to
participate as a panel member in a client/server technical panel
discussion dealing with back-end server issues. In my case, the focus was
Rdb and Digital. There were five people on the Server Database Panel, The
other server databases which were represented by other experts were
ORACLE's RDBMS, SYBASE's SQL SERVER, Microsoft's SQL SERVER, Borland's
INTERBASE, and Novell's Netware SQL. There was a lot of good information
disseminated about the various server's and their capabilities. Two of
the most important facts that came out of that panel discussion were 1)
that the server market is becoming increasingly commoditized with
pressures being placed on the vendors to provide many standardized
features and capabilities at increasingly competitive prices, and 2) there
seems to be more and more emphasis on server capabilities with operating
system capabilities being taken for granted. In other words, people are
more interested in the back-end server DBMS itself than they are about the
OS, or what hardware platform it is running on. One other interesting
fact was that people who were attending fully embraced client/server as
established way of building systems. People are no longer looking at
client/server as something to experiment with or to pilot a solution with.
They are either actively planning to architect full blown, mission
critical applications using back-end server databases and PC front-end
software (i.e. Rdb as a server database and PARADOX with PARADOX SQL LINK
as a front-end), or they are already placing them into production.
About 100 people attended this panel discussion, I asked for a show of
hands there were five people who were actively using Rdb as their back-end
server, but there were several others who were using other database
servers on Digital platforms. I found that there is strong interest in
Digital's porting Rdb to WINDOWS NT on ALPHA, and to OSF/1. And attendees
were also interested in Rdb 6.0's latest TPC-A world record benchmark on a
uniprocessor (302.68 using an ALPHA 7000).
NEW TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRY TRENDS AS PRESENTED BY FOUR INDUSTRY LEADERS
Keynote Speakers
There were four keynote speakers. Philippe Kahn, President and CEO of
Borland, Andy Grove, President and CEO of Intel, John Soyring, Director
PC Software Development Systems at IBM, and Darrell Miller, Executive
Vice President of Novell. Highlights of their speeches are very relevant
to what's happening in the industry and are outlined below, by speaker.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Philippe Kahn, President and CEO of Borland International - 5/16/93
The theme of the conference this year was "Power Made Easy", where
Borland software products provide easy access to computer power for
programmers and users.
Philippe used the chart below to dramatically demonstrate the advances
that are taking place in hardware technology:
"The Machine You Want Costs $2500"
----------------------------------
1993 1995 2002
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
CPU | i486 Pentium Micro2000 |
| |
Speed | 66 MHz 100 MHz 500 MHz |
| |
RAM | 8 MB 24 MB 2 GB |
| |
Disk | 120 MB 1 GB 10 GB |
| |
Price | $2500 $2500 $2500 |
| |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
Philippe then identified major "waves" in the software industry, and
these overlap:
objects as software components
graphical-user-interface-based systems
character-based systems
The need for object-based computing is driven by the increasing
complexity of software, as it is driven by the demand for
better and more sophisticated user/programmer features:
To dramatically demonstrate the ever increasing complexity of software,
Philippe displayed this graph. Keep in mind that since Borland is the
producer of QUATTRO, QUATTRO PRO for DOS, and QUATTRO PRO for WINDOWS, he
was speaking with some authority when he displayed this graph:
Average Lines Of Code For A Typical Spreadsheet Package
--------------------------------------------------------
(LOG10 Graph)
|
10,000,000 | o
|
|
|
|
1,000,000 | o
|
|
|
|
100,000 | o
|
|
|
|
+--------------------------------------------------------->
1984 1993 2002
Then to enlighten his audience about some of the human aspects of
software product development, he shared with us, his own Philippe's Law
of Programmer Productivity (with credit for inspiration given to Fredrick
P. Brooks, Jr., "The Mythical Man-Month", Addison-Wesley Publishing,
January 1982.): For a typical software development project, the
productivity of programmers is governed pretty much by the formula shown
below. The idea being that you achieve the BEST PRODUCTIVITY with a
FEWER number of programmers, so if you take people AWAY from a project,
the productivity of the remaining programmers increases.
15,000
Ln = --------------
Cube Root of n
Where:
L = the productivity in terms of lines of code be year
n = number of software engineers on the project
15,000 = a constant, being the average number of lines a
good software engineer can produce in a single year.
A graph of Philippe's Law applied to actual numbers of engineers is shown
below:
Philippe's Law
Productivity in Lines Of Code Per Year Per Engineer
Lines Of Code -----------------------------------------------------------
Per Year
|
15,000 | o
|
|
|
|
7,500 | o
|
|
|
|
5,000 | o
|
|
|
|
+--------------------------------------------------------->
1 8 27
Number of Engineers
Philippe announced the formation of a new Client/Server Division
at Borland. This will be headed by Rob Dickerson, who formerly
headed the Business Products Development Division. This new C/S division
will be place the INTERBASE database management system, and all the
products that provide client/server functionality (PARADOX SQL LINK amd
Borland SQL LINK) with it and other servers, as well as their middleware
(IDAPI) people under Dickerson. This demonstrates a new solidarity
within Borland to strengthen and focus efforts in the booming
client/server market. (* This follows the lead of vendors such as ORACLE,
INGRES, and IBM which have also announced their own client/server
divisions in the past 12 months.)
Borland plans to target INTERBASE in the server database market as a
RDBMS which can handle the client/server mission critical needs of an
enterprise, while having the flexibility and uniqueness to provide such
features as BLObs and BLOb filters under transaction control, advanced
array processing, "event alerters" to intelligently trigger events
based on many possibilities of selected criteria, and instantaneous
recovery in case of platform failure. In terms of licensing revenue, it
is worth noting here, that INTERBASE is the fifth most popular server
database in this in increasingly competitive market. INTERBASE operates
on UNIX and VAX VMS platforms, with efforts to port to WINDOWS NT already
announced.
-----------------------End Of Kahn Presentation Notes-------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Grove, President and CEO of Intel - 5/17/93
Grove announced publicly that the Pentium started shipping on 5/17/93
in Compaq, Dell, and AST boxes.
The purpose of the new technological advancements in hardware and
software are to bring speed and immediacy to business.
1980s saw the creation of a "New Computer Industry", which went from
being a vertical to a horizontal industry.
The five areas which constantly compete for market share are:
Each respective competitor has some
portion between these lines
100% of all companies which compete
<--------------------------------------->
+-----------------------------------------+
Distribution | % mkt share | | | | | | | ||
+-----------------------------------------+
Applications | | | | | | | | | |
+-----------------------------------------+
System Software | | | | | | | ||
+-----------------------------------------+
Computer Platforms | | | | | | | | |
+-----------------------------------------+
Silicon | Intel | | | | | | ||
+-----------------------------------------+
"It's a very messy business and a very competitive business."
The New Computer Industry has accelerated the rate of change in the
industry.
The price reductions in the i486 killed the i386 in just one year, 1992.
Right now, Intel ships about 40 million processors annually.
The "Volume Explosion" of 1993 - PCs Become a Major Electronic
Home Commodity. Consider this replica of a graph which Grove showed his
audience:
Units Shipped Per Year
--------------------------------------------------------
Millions |
|
80 |
| _
| | |
| | | _
| | | | |
40 | _ | | | |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
+--------------------------------------------------------->
Cars Televisions PCs
This is the first year that demand for PCs has outstripped the demand
for new automobiles, meaning that more people than ever before are buying
PCs.
To show Intel's place in the CPU industry, Grove displayed this chart:
Intel CISC CPUs vs. the Competition in 1992:
CPU No. Units Shipped
-------------- -----------------
i386 and i486 32,000,000
i860 2,100,000
AMD 820,000
SPARC 320,000
MIPS 290,000
Motorola 62,000 *
* I question the Motorola CPU figures based on my knowledge of the
Macintosh market. This seems greatly understated.
Then Grove shared a quote on from "This Week In Electronics" a January
1993 issue:
"Personal computers are the fastest growing segment on the personal
electronics market."
In order to meet the expectations of larger volumes of new users who are
increasingly less sophisticated, the operation of hardware and software
must become as simple as a "plug and play" appliance, similar to the ease
of operation of a television or a toaster.
To illustrate the fact that increasing numbers of users are less
sophisticated technically, while the volume of PCs being sold continues to
increase, Grove shared this chart:
Historical Volume Of New PCs Sold Vs.
The Average Level Of New User Technical Sophistication
Volume of PCs +----------------------------------------------------------
|
- and - | + volume of PCs sold
| + o
Relative Level | + o
of Technical | + o
Sophistication | + o
| + o
| + o
| o +
| o +
| o +
| o +
| o +
| o +
| o new user technical
| sophistication
|
+--------------------------------------------------------->
Time
New standard in the PC industry - the PCI - Peripheral Components
Interface, which leads to the Expandable Card Architecture and "plug and
play" for mobile computing.
Grove sees three categories of new uses for PCs:
o Enterprise Applications:
Examples: Netware 4.0, WINDOWS NT, Solaris, and NEXTSTEP
Comments:
More enterprise software ports are targeting Intel platforms than
any other platform. OSF/1 is being ported to Intel. *
* First I heard of this!
o Business Video
Comments:
They have created a trademarked in name "INDEO" which is Intel
Video Technology. This segment of Intel is chartered with
producing business video technology which is scalable and portable
to other platforms.
o Electronic Meetings and Messaging
Comments:
To move ahead we have to "fix the infrastructure" of technology use
in business. It is bogged down with many devices which do not work
well or at all together.
The PC can incorporate these business tools into one device:
phone
FAX
E-mail
terminal
PC applications
Desktop Management Taskforce (DMT)
Several technology companies are working together to develop APIs
to wed PCs and telephones. It is called the "Telephony API" and it
is being published jointly by Intel and Microsoft.
Another major trend in the industry is "computer-supported collaboration"
which is bringing speed and immediacy in business. LANs are upscaling to
WANs. Intel executives have found that the utility of information
increases as it expands over distances. So this increases the need
to develop higher capacity networks to support computer telephony.
Intel will be developing new uses for WANs and seeking to improve the
WAN infrastructure in partnership with several technology companies:
among these are: ALCATEL, AMERITECH, BellSouth, Bell Atlantic, and
several others.
The next big step in technology is what Groves calls "The Field Of
Dreams" in which you get (practically) "Free MIPs and Free BAUDs".
The Pentium was released on March 22, 1993. It has 3.1 million
transistors and costs $5 billion to bring to market. This is the first
desktop processor to which code can be optimized to.
It's a BIG BUSINESS. (the CPU technology business) The price of
admission increases for each new leap in technology. Intel is spending
$2 billion a year on research and development. You have to pay in
advance to play. This is a $70 to $80 billion a year business.
There are 150 million Intel platforms worldwide, and they are expecting
there to be 250 million Intel platforms by the end of 1995. Their goal
is to have a vast installed base of powerful, upgradable PCs. (Thereby
resulting in a lot of repeat business.)
In the near future, they expect WANs to be cheap and have integrated
applications.
The challenge to this generation of software engineers is to write the
next generation of software which will most effectively exploit the
architecture of the Pentium and other advanced CPUs, which will eventually
lead to (practically) "Free MIPs and Free BAUDs".
Engineers must address the business imperative of the 90s: Speed and
Immediacy In Business.
Grove's Q&A:
Q: How do you see Pentium competing against Digital's ALPHA CPU
(which has been clocked at 150 to 200 MHz)?
A: The question is a strange one. The central issue is load vs.
architecture. "Brute Force" is not good. High frequency is not
good. What you need on your desktop is a powerful CPU, not an "FM
transmitter."
Q: How do you see UNIX platforms fitting in with the current industry
trend of downsizing and client/server? Do you see the UNIX
platform as being a client or a server?
A: I see the UNIX platform as being one to downsize to, a server
platform. I do not see too many UNIX platforms as being clients.
-----------------------End Of Grove Presentation Notes------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Soyring, Director PC Software Development Systems at IBM - 5/18/93
Announced the latest and greatest version of OS/2, version 2.1 will begin
shipping on June 14, 1993. The price will be $99 for the introductory
price and $250 list price thereafter.
New OS/2 2.1 features:
32 Bit Graphics Engine
New Device Drivers
Support for WINDOWS 3.1
DPMI 0.9 and Enhancements Support for AUTOCAD 12.0
Better Performance, Smaller Size
CD-ROM Support
Mobile PC Support
PC MCIA - Hot Plug To Network Support
He sees a re-focusing of IBM on networking technology and "human-centric"
technology.
He also sees evolving standards creating a "plug and play" world.
OS/2 2.0 presently has two million users. It has been converted into 18
languages and it is used in over 60 countries. Typical OS/2 users are
software developers and small businesses.
Operating Systems Which They Are Focusing On:
PC-DOS
AIX
OS/2
WORKPLACE
Strategies for the Near Future:
Support Popular Hardware
Support Legacy Applications
Consider Look And Feel
Common Distributed Computing
Management Support
Future Offerings:
DOS with WORKPLACE
OS/2 with WORKPLACE
AIX with WORKPLACE
WORKPLACE OS
A new PC-DOS is coming. It will be new and improved because after
careful study and analysis, they have determined that MS-DOS 6.0 is very
buggy.
150 to 200 million Intel processors will be shipped in the next five
years. This will create many more opportunities for IBM.
If you run 16-Bit DOS, you don't utilize the full power of your system.
Which is a good reason to buy and run OS/2.
They want to create an OS platform (WORKPLACE??) which can run UNIX and
MAC applications.
He said IBM likes Digital's ALPHA CPU and plans to port WORKPLACE to it.
He said that WORKPLACE should be portable to all RISC CPUs.
Below is the diagram which Soyring shared showing the future of their OS
architecture and strategy. Note the IBM MicroKernal at the bottom,
which is small, is symmetric multi-processing, and portable.
+-----------------------------------------+
| |
| WORKPLACE - OO-GUI |
| |
+-----------+----------+----------+-------+
| Device | File | Multi- | OS/2 |
| Drivers | Systems | Vendors | |
| | | | |
| | | WINDOWS,| |
| | | etc. | |
| | | | |
+-----------+----------+----------+-------+
| |
| IBM's New MicroKernal |
| |
+-----------------------------------------+
| (Hardware) |
| Intel 32 & 64 Bit Architectures |
| (as well as other RISC CPUs) |
+-----------------------------------------+
The MicroKernal will be the core piece of all their new desktop operating
systems, as well as OS/2 and AIX in the future. This MicroKernal has
supposedly already been developed, and is simply awaiting integration
with the software components which will interoperate with it.
In the near future at IBM, operating system interfaces will be known as
"personalities". For instance, there can be a UNIX personality
interface. It will be possible to switch to one of multiple personality
interfaces which may be "subservient" to the "dominant personality"
interface. Each of these subservient personalities could give the look
and feel of another operating system, which is different than the
dominant personality interface.
Part of the push for the IBM MicroKernal is in something known as COSE
(Common Operating System Environment), and this is being supported by six
major vendors of UNIX and UNIX varients.
User Interface Directions:
(Despite the overwhelming acceptance and popularity of the
Microsoft WINDOWS GUI standard...)
o IBM intends to evolve the OO GUI in the WORKPLACE SHELL
o They want to extend the WORKPLACE SHELL with:
Multimedia
Pen Support
Touch Support
Continuous Speech Recognition
(and developer kits which support this list are
available TODAY!)
o They want to develop the Usable Intuitive Interface
On IBM LAN Systems Technology - Plans
Today IBM Has:
o LANServer 3.0
o Netware For IBM
o LAN Netview
In the Future:
o Enhancements for all of the above, plus
o Support for Distributed Computing Environment (DCE)
o Support for Distributed Management Environment (DME)
o Support for the Distributed System Object Model (DSOM)
o Heterogeneous connectivity
o Plugging and playing
In Object Technology:
Today IBM Has:
o IBM OS/2 System Object Model (SOM)
o C Language Bindings
In the Near Future:
o SOM for OS/2 and AIX
o Distributed SOM
o Additional Language Support
o OMG CORBA Compliance
o New Capabilities:
- Multi-Inheritance
- Persistence
- Replication
In the Long-Term Future:
o Taligent Technology
On Client/Server Computing:
"Lack of standards has hindered the creation of client/server
applications ..."
More On OS/2:
o Strong acceptance with:
- customers
- software developers
- hardware manufacturers
- others
o IBM has a long-term commitment toward OS/2:
- technical development
- marketing and sales program
- over 100 OEM agreements on OS/2
- OS/2 will run on the POWER PC chip
o OS/2 2.1 will be available on CD-ROM
- Probably $15 to $25 for an OS/2 2.1 Developer's Kit
- Probably intro price of $99
- Probably intro price of $99 with an OS/2 2.0 cover page (special
offer)
- Possibly as low as $69 for the CD ROM version of OS/2 2.1
-----------------------End Of Soyring Presentation Notes----------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Darrell Miller, Executive VP of Novell - 5/19/93
Some Global Business Trends:
o Recession
o Consumers are incredibly well informed about their products
o Consumers will go ANYWHERE to buy products and services
o Only products of high value at the lowest price will survive
Historical Shelters (Which Are Disappearing)
o Geographical shelters
o Historical loyalties
o Political tariffs and regulation
Product Cycles Have Shortened To Between 6 To 18 Months. The chart that
Miller produced the chart below to show this cycle:
4. Field Sales
/ \
/ \
/ \
1. Corporate Planning 3. Consumer
\ /
\ /
\ /
2. New Product
He said nobody really makes "5-year Plans" anymore. It seems like the
longest plans people can make anymore is 2-year plans.
There is a "Global Information Framework" being developed.
Evidence of this is technology empowering those that affect the
customers: cellular telephones, portable computers, and televisions
The BIG PARADOX: (* <---- Don't confuse with the product, PARADOX
He didn't mean Borland's PARADOX)
"It's a tug of war between Flexibility and Control."
How do we get there (toward the Global Information Framework)?
o Designing a strategy
- portable
- surrogate
- distributed service
o Information System Departments' Role: To build "firewalls"
and also build "highways" and "infrastructure" to the data
to help users.
o Novell has developed Netware IP to facilitate connectivity for
TCP/IP.
o Generic Netmanagement "Agents" which perform management on
networks, independent of any standards.
o The "portable user" using a "portable computing device":
Issues:
- Battery (Storage and Processing - Still lags other components)
- Complex data (objects)
- Portablity
- Location Independent
- Authentication (encryption on the fly)
The technology is available TODAY for these "portable computing
devices", yet many, many issues such as privacy and security must
be solved to make these a reality in the consumer marketplace.
o Distributed Object Directory
User Views Surrogate Services
---------- ---------- ----------
Information Printing
Filtering File server
Decision Processing FAX
UNIX is best for this Host Connect.
Largest no. of vertical apps. Database
Development environments
32-bit multi-tasking and
multi-processing
o Security Issues - Authentication and Authorization
- Public Keys and Private Keys
- Secure Access Network
o Novell Core Capabilities
Netware UNIX
SNA (largest single provider)
o Novell Core APIs
- Common Development
- Common Transaction Services
- Streams
o All this Novell Technology Completes Their "Winning Strategy".
Questions and Answers:
Q: Isn't WINDOWS NT a better development environment than Netware
and/or UNIVELL?
A: I'm not going to belittle WINDOWS NT... But a key differentiator
is that Novell is "already there" (established) network
management, instead of having to deal with (the limitations of)
NT's discreet devices.
Q: What about the future of DOS and OS/2?
If MS closes off the APIs and/or abandons DOS, DR DOS (which
NOVELL owns) will remain there steadfastly to "carry the DOS
torch" forward for the rest of the world who wants to use DOS.
OS/2 has a solid user base which is concentrated in the banking
industry and the community of in-house developers.
-----------------------End Of Miller Presentation Notes-------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Session Notes and Proceedings Binders:
I took several pages of notes during the technical sessions I attended.
Mostly I attended sessions on PARADOX for WINDOWS, migrating into PARADOX
for WINDOWS, and even one session on WINDOWS NT. The conference binders I
mailed back to myself weighed in at over 20 pounds, and this was the
PARADOX proceedings alone. They had other binders on dBase, Borland
Languages (C++ and PASCAL), INTERBASE, but we were only allowed to sign up
for one set of proceedings.
My Comments:
First, this was the best run technical conference that I ever attended.
The Borland people and the conference planners and technical presenters
all deserve great deal of credit for their planning and hard work that
made this conference such a success. With so many people going in so many
different directions into so many different technical presentations, this
can be compared to organizing a small technical college of 4000 people to
start, operate, and disband after four days. An amazing feat by anyone's
standards.
In this conference of 4000 technical people, I was the only person there
representing Digital, so I met several people who were interested in
Digital technology, and viewed me as a sounding board and liaison for them.
I collected a lot of business cards. Digital's (my) presence at the
conference was very well received, and I was a good ambassador for our
company and our technology. Many of my old and new friends in the world
of Borland software (Borland people and users of their software) were very
excited to find that Digital is planning to be the world's largest
reseller of WINDOWS NT and the largest provider of WINDOWS NT services.
(This made me prouder than ever to be a Digital employee!)
One of the things this conference impressed me with is the fact desktop-
based software (whether it's a database package, a spreadsheet
package, or a application language development environment) is
sufficiently complex enough that it is absolutely essential to have
these yearly conferences to share ideas and let the experts show
people how they've used this software in the past 12 months to solve real
world problems. Being able to share in their experiences and knowledge of
technology makes all the participants better computer professionals.
Caution: The market for the desktop and downsizing has reached critical
mass. There are 150 million Intel machines worldwide, and in the next
three years they expect to grow that number by 150 - 250 million. I
heard "downsizing, upsizing, right-sizing, and client/server" so many
times each day that I was there, that it became like a "mantra" people
were chanting. If could give any advice to Digital management and my
colleagues at Digital it would be to press full steam ahead to get some
market share out of this trend.
Externally, my biggest concern is that people view Digital either two
ways: 1) As a platform to "downsize" from; or 2) As a key platform and
company to implement downsizing. And people I talked to at the
conference are not interested in VAX VMS software anymore, but Rdb, ALPHA,
client/server, downsizing, upsizing from LANs, interoperability: all these
Digital capabilities really excite them.
Internally, I hope that Digital Services, Sales, and Software people
can rapidly acquire the understanding that this movement has reached
critical mass, and get the skills and the vision as a company to go
after this market. Each time I hear a coworker at Digital bash PCs and PC
software, I realize how much further we as a company to go to be in the
mindset of doing business with the rest of the world. At this point in
time, ANYTHING we say and/or do that shows that we are not 100% committed
to client/server downsizing and upsizing is counterproductive to our image
in the market place and our future success as a technology company.
A Recommendation: (For people outside of my organization who read this.)
I have a hard copy list which contains all the audio tapes of all the
200+ presentations which were made at the conference. I will be happy to
share this list with any Digital employee, so they may consider purchasing
the tapes. The tapes are $9.00 per session, and are actually pretty good
quality. I bought three and was given one of the Client/Server Database
Server Panel that I participated in. I would also recommend that Digital
people and organizations, invest a couple or hundred dollars or so to
purchase the Languages (PASCAL and C++) binder, the PARADOX binder, and
the INTERBASE binder. These professional papers and presentations
could prove invaluable to people at Digital who have to get work done
using these tools. Consider this strongly.
Dale and Larry, thanks for sending me to this conference. It was a lot
of fun and extremely educational, in addition to all the flag waving for
Digital, and the good stuff I learned. This made for the third year in
row that I have attended the Borland Conference, and I hope I can attend
next year to represent Digital again.
Bill Slater
| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 2512.1 | "UPSIZING" is a great term! | ANGLIN::ROGERS | | Fri May 28 1993 17:39 | 24 |
| Bill,
Thank you for an excellent after-action report. Very few people would
take the time to professionally and accurately transmit the flavor as
well as the details.
I got several valuable "heads up flashes" from your report, including:
1. IBM may port their new operating system to Alpha (as well
as other RISC platforms).
2. OSF/1 is being ported to Intel.
In addition, your comment about "upsizing" struck a chord with me. As
a salesperson, I have been talking about "downsizing" to Alpha, but
this still plays to our old image. If I start talking about "upsizing"
to LAN superservers, it positions us exactly right in the customer's
mind. When we talk about "downsizing", we're still the minicomputer
company trying to steal bread from the mainframes; when we say
"upsizing", it says we are starting off with a PC/desktop orientation,
and seeing what we can do to improve _that_ environment...
Thanks for the idea!
Larry
|
| 2512.2 | The "Condensed Version", with Pictures | SOJU::SLATER | Synchronicity - It's Everywhere! | Fri May 28 1993 19:40 | 392 |
| Re: .1
Thanks for your remarks. I received several e-mails from people who
enthusiastically read this trip report.
I do understand however, that some are hesitant to wade through such a
long trip report. I also understand that some folks are more "visually
thinking" so I have attached a shorter version with the pictures,
charts and explanations accompanying these.
Enjoy!
Bill
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By William F. Slater, III
Digital Equipment Corportaion
Merrimack, NH
DTN 264-4953
SOJU::SLATER
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I attended the 1993 Borland International Conference in San Diego, from
May 16th - 19th.
The conference consisted of over 200 technical presentations presented by
experts in the following technical areas: client/server, INTERBASE,
PARADOX for DOS, PARADOX for WINDOWS, dBase for DOS, dBase for WINDOWS,
C++, PASCAL, etc.
NEW TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRY TRENDS AS PRESENTED BY FOUR INDUSTRY LEADERS
Keynote Speakers
There were four keynote speakers. Philippe Kahn, President and CEO of
Borland, Andy Grove, President and CEO of Intel, John Soyring, Director
PC Software Development Systems at IBM, and Darrell Miller, Executive
Vice President of Novell. Highlights of their speeches are very relevant
to what's happening in the industry and are outlined below, by speaker.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Philippe Kahn, President and CEO of Borland International - 5/16/93
Philippe used the chart below to dramatically demonstrate the advances
that are taking place in hardware technology:
"The Machine You Want Costs $2500"
----------------------------------
1993 1995 2002
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
CPU | i486 Pentium Micro2000 |
| |
Speed | 66 MHz 100 MHz 500 MHz |
| |
RAM | 8 MB 24 MB 2 GB |
| |
Disk | 120 MB 1 GB 10 GB |
| |
Price | $2500 $2500 $2500 |
| |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
Philippe then identified major "waves" in the software industry, and
these overlap:
objects as software components
graphical-user-interface-based systems
character-based systems
The need for object-based computing is driven by the increasing
complexity of software, as it is driven by the demand for
better and more sophisticated user/programmer features:
To dramatically demonstrate the ever increasing complexity of software,
Philippe displayed this graph. Keep in mind that since Borland is the
producer of QUATTRO, QUATTRO PRO for DOS, and QUATTRO PRO for WINDOWS, he
was speaking with some authority when he displayed this graph:
Average Lines Of Code For A Typical Spreadsheet Package
--------------------------------------------------------
(LOG10 Graph)
|
10,000,000 | o
|
|
|
|
1,000,000 | o
|
|
|
|
100,000 | o
|
|
|
|
+--------------------------------------------------------->
1984 1993 2002
Then to enlighten his audience about some of the human aspects of
software product development, he shared with us, his own Philippe's Law
of Programmer Productivity (with credit for inspiration given to Fredrick
P. Brooks, Jr., "The Mythical Man-Month", Addison-Wesley Publishing,
January 1982.): For a typical software development project, the
productivity of programmers is governed pretty much by the formula shown
below. The idea being that you achieve the BEST PRODUCTIVITY with a
FEWER number of programmers, so if you take people AWAY from a project,
the productivity of the remaining programmers increases.
15,000
Ln = --------------
Cube Root of n
Where:
L = the productivity in terms of lines of code be year
n = number of software engineers on the project
15,000 = a constant, being the average number of lines a
good software engineer can produce in a single year.
A graph of Philippe's Law applied to actual numbers of engineers is shown
below:
Philippe's Law
Productivity in Lines Of Code Per Year Per Engineer
Lines Of Code -----------------------------------------------------------
Per Year
|
15,000 | o
|
|
|
|
7,500 | o
|
|
|
|
5,000 | o
|
|
|
|
+--------------------------------------------------------->
1 8 27
Number of Engineers
-----------------------End Of Kahn Presentation Notes-------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Grove, President and CEO of Intel - 5/17/93
1980s saw the creation of a "New Computer Industry", which went from
being a vertical to a horizontal industry.
The five areas which constantly compete for market share are:
Each respective competitor has some
portion between these lines
100% of all companies which compete
<--------------------------------------->
+-----------------------------------------+
Distribution | % mkt share | | | | | | | ||
+-----------------------------------------+
Applications | | | | | | | | | |
+-----------------------------------------+
System Software | | | | | | | ||
+-----------------------------------------+
Computer Platforms | | | | | | | | |
+-----------------------------------------+
Silicon | Intel | | | | | | ||
+-----------------------------------------+
"It's a very messy business and a very competitive business."
Right now, Intel ships about 40 million processors annually.
The "Volume Explosion" of 1993 - PCs Become a Major Electronic
Home Commodity. Consider this replica of a graph which Grove showed his
audience:
Units Shipped Per Year
--------------------------------------------------------
Millions |
|
80 |
| _
| | |
| | | _
| | | | |
40 | _ | | | |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
+--------------------------------------------------------->
Cars Televisions PCs
This is the first year that demand for PCs has outstripped the demand
for new automobiles, meaning that more people than ever before are buying
PCs.
To show Intel's place in the CPU industry, Grove displayed this chart:
Intel CISC CPUs vs. the Competition in 1992:
CPU No. Units Shipped
-------------- -----------------
i386 and i486 32,000,000
i860 2,100,000
AMD 820,000
SPARC 320,000
MIPS 290,000
Motorola 62,000 *
* I question the Motorola CPU figures based on my knowledge of the
Macintosh market. This seems greatly understated.
In order to meet the expectations of larger volumes of new users who are
increasingly less sophisticated, the operation of hardware and software
must become as simple as a "plug and play" appliance, similar to the ease
of operation of a television or a toaster.
To illustrate the fact that increasing numbers of users are less
sophisticated technically, while the volume of PCs being sold continues to
increase, Grove shared this chart:
Historical Volume Of New PCs Sold Vs.
The Average Level Of New User Technical Sophistication
Volume of PCs +----------------------------------------------------------
|
- and - | + volume of PCs sold
| + o
Relative Level | + o
of Technical | + o
Sophistication | + o
| + o
| + o
| o +
| o +
| o +
| o +
| o +
| o +
| o new user technical
| sophistication
|
+--------------------------------------------------------->
Time
-----------------------End Of Grove Presentation Notes------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Soyring, Director PC Software Development Systems at IBM - 5/18/93
Announced the latest and greatest version of OS/2, version 2.1 will begin
shipping on June 14, 1993. The price will be $99 for the introductory
price and $250 list price thereafter.
New OS/2 2.1 features:
32 Bit Graphics Engine
New Device Drivers
Support for WINDOWS 3.1
DPMI 0.9 and Enhancements Support for AUTOCAD 12.0
Better Performance, Smaller Size
CD-ROM Support
Mobile PC Support
PC MCIA - Hot Plug To Network Support
Operating Systems Which They Are Focusing On:
PC-DOS
AIX
OS/2
WORKPLACE
Below is the diagram which Soyring shared showing the future of their OS
architecture and strategy. Note the IBM MicroKernal at the bottom,
which is small, is symmetric multi-processing, and portable.
+-----------------------------------------+
| |
| WORKPLACE - OO-GUI |
| |
+-----------+----------+----------+-------+
| Device | File | Multi- | OS/2 |
| Drivers | Systems | Vendors | |
| | | | |
| | | WINDOWS,| |
| | | etc. | |
| | | | |
+-----------+----------+----------+-------+
| |
| IBM's New MicroKernal |
| |
+-----------------------------------------+
| (Hardware) |
| Intel 32 & 64 Bit Architectures |
| (as well as other RISC CPUs) |
+-----------------------------------------+
The MicroKernal will be the core piece of all their new desktop operating
systems, as well as OS/2 and AIX in the future. This MicroKernal has
supposedly already been developed, and is simply awaiting integration
with the software components which will interoperate with it.
-----------------------End Of Soyring Presentation Notes----------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Darrell Miller, Executive VP of Novell - 5/19/93
Product Cycles Have Shortened To Between 6 To 18 Months. The chart that
Miller produced the chart below to show this cycle:
4. Field Sales
/ \
/ \
/ \
1. Corporate Planning 3. Consumer
\ /
\ /
\ /
2. New Product
He said nobody really makes "5-year Plans" anymore. It seems like the
longest plans people can make anymore is 2-year plans.
-----------------------End Of Miller Presentation Notes-------------------
Bill Slater
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