Conference 7.286::digital

    Quite right too....
    
    Then PC's, then Multias, then Alpha clients, then Alpha servers. Now,
    what was our core competency again ?
    
    Alan
    

Management.

	Steve

    SBU logistics is next......Ryder Dedicated Logistics.....give me a
    break.

    
    I have lots of VT terminals. Can I sell them along with the deal ?

    The article mentions that the VT and Dorio line of terminals will be
    sold and that the Multia will be kept.
    
    What about the X-terminal business?  Was the lack of any comment just
    an ovesight or does it mean that business is up for grabs but we have
    not yet found a buyer?

    >The article mentions that the VT and Dorio line of terminals will be
    >sold and that the Multia will be kept.
    
    >What about the X-terminal business?  
    
    No, the VXT's weren't included.  Nobody could possibly afford all the
    money we'd want if we were to sell those.
    
    Dave
    
    

Can someone explain why selling this successful business is a good thing?

Paul

    what about the Lan Terminal(s)?

It's a low-margin, cutthroat business, though it does put our name in front of
hundreds of thousands of users, even those not using any other Digital product.
I can sort of understand it, but it feels bad to lose yet another product
area where we set the industry standard.

				Steve

    It's a low-margin, cutthroat business that we effectively won and
    despite Mr. Christ's statement I believe it was a core business and was
    quite well differentitated in the marketplace. There was only one
    serious competitor in that space and it was flirting with Chapter 11
    bankruptcy when I last checked. 
    
    Alas, I suspect the money was needed more for C&P's bottom line.

    Perhaps we're selling it because our Fearless Leaders, who lead from
    behind, think that it's an obsolete business and wish, like the team
    that owns an aging pitcher, to get out before it wears out; you sell
    while there's still a season in the guy's arm, not after he retires.

    
    The terminals business is a cut throat business, but we held the knife.
    
    We had the newest line in the industry, the most reliable product, 
    and name brand recognition.  We sold 350,000 units per year, every year
    and increased world wide market share in '94 by 4%.  Text terminals were
    very profitable.
    
    Terminals aren't glamorous, don't have much political panache and won't 
    put you on the front of ComputerWorld magazine but they paid a lot of 
    rent while the rest of the company was adjusting to our brave new world.
    
    
    
    
    Rest in Peace 
    
    
    
    
    
    

    sounds like pickett's charge. sacrifice all.

    Re. -1
    
    Maybe this time Pickett will lead the charge?

    While I was on a flight yesterday I read and article called Strategic
    Intent (reference below).  It discussed a number of organisational
    problems, such as why Strategic Business Units (SBUs) do not work,
    the process of surrender (selling off "mature" businesses), etc.  It
    gave a number of interesting examples, such as Cannon vs. Xerox, Honda's
    move into the US market, etc.

    It was a little depressing because it demonstrated where Digital
    appeared to be making its mistakes.  When I received this in mail
    this morning, I was more depressed.

    What I would like to know is exactly where this company thinks it is
    going.  If you are wondering why, it is because I used to work for
    Honeywell when it was the second biggest computer company...

    Hamel, G.; Prahalad, C. K.: 1989, `Strategic Intent', Harvard Business
    Review, May-June 1989, Pages 63-76.

    chaps,
         this is all part of the inevitable shifts in mass marketing.We do
    not need to MAKE terminals to put our name in front of people and we do
    not need to investment and management overhead of being in this sort of
    business given what Digital is trying to be.
    And yes,it will be PCs next(why MAKE them?),networking hardware
    products one day(unless we licence them to someone else).In the interim
    the marginal businesses we are in will go as well.This is what is
    happening to the IT market in general(and many other markets
    too).Services is the future simply because this is what keeps client
    contact and keeps clients.
    Did you buy a stereo or anything recently?How did you choose it?Bet it
    wasn't other than a rough idea of the brands with a good reputation and
    which was the most convenient shop and which shop had a sales support
    guy who knew what he was talking about.
    The only thing I can guarantee is that we will continue to invest in
    our core competancy...:-)
    Pity but probably true

re Note 4089.16 by ANNECY::HOTCHKISS:

>     And yes,it will be PCs next(why MAKE them?),networking hardware
>     products one day(unless we licence them to someone else).

        Who was it, in his departure note, that described how Digital
        was becoming a Sears Roebuck?

        Bob

    I don't have the knowledge or the data to say whether these sales are
    good or bad overall, they feel bad but that's the view of an old timer.
    
    What worries me is that I don't see the new "things" being nurtured to
    take their place. I accept that over a company's lifetime it has to
    change, maybe gradually, maybe radically. But it has to change to
    something.
    
    Digital has a long history of producing a wave 1 product and never
    reaping the benefits. A glaring example was our perceived lead with the
    ApplicationDEC 433MP, no follow up for years, now everyone is making
    lots of SMP Intel boxes.
    
    Today I see very few of these products appearing to give us something
    to take to the marketplace. That makes me worry about selling off too
    many bits.
    
    Andrew

>    What worries me is that I don't see the new "things" being nurtured to
>    take their place. I accept that over a company's lifetime it has to

     Yeah, nothing like growing the business by selling off the
     pieces. The only exception is the Interactive video business
     (a.k.a video-on-demand) which is a market segment that Digital
     intends to be very successful and profitable. 



   
     

    What....you don't think we would sell off the Interactive Video
    Business if we were approached by someone and could turn a fast buck to
    line our coffers to continue to invest in our "core competencies"?
    
    BTW, what are our "core competencies"? I would like to see that defined
    again by executive management.
    
    cs

Why did we really sell off the VT business?

  I don't think the full story can be told yet.

From where I see it, organization constraints made running the business
increasingly difficult.  There were also some management mistakes.
Once things got messy, there were not enough people willing to stand
up (risk their careers) for the business.

With proper management, the VT business should be very profitable.
I think Sun River got a good deal.  Given the current organization
constraints, Digital probably did too.

- Peter

    
    If that be true (-1) then we should probably sell *all* our
    manufacturing :-(. Then we could look like the rest of the MA
    computer companies.
    
    This was a stupid move. Period.
    
    	the Greyhawk

    I notice C&P WW Mktg VP Joe Cannizzaro is....gone.

> I notice C&P WW Mktg VP Joe Cannizzaro is....gone.

  I think he got DEC'ed.

                                   Atlant

>    This was a stupid move. Period.

I don't disagree.  But the mistakes leading up to it were made 6-24 months ago
and reflect in part the kind of company we've become.

We pursued an extremely aggressive growth strategy in a market that
was declining 10%/year.  We built a strong product aimed squarely
at our largest competitor and cut our prices 20% to under price them.
They responded immediately by cutting their prices 20%.  In the battle
that followed, we increased volume by around 7% but seriously eroded
our margins.  Our competitor lost about 18% of their volume and came
close to chapter 11.  We were now selling so cheaply, our largest
potential OEM customers could no longer make enough money
(they told us: "You're ruining the business") and dropped us
in favor of the company that is buying the business.

We re-organized our sales force and channels out of existance.
Almost nobody was motivated, trained, and goaled to sell text VTs anymore.
Multia is the future.

We were too optimistic in our volume forecast and ended up with excess
inventory and a cash flow problem that senior management did not appreciate.

We focussed on rapid growth and beating the competition instead
of margin times volume (normally important for a mature cash cow
product line).

So, would you stand up and try to convince the BOD that text video terminals
are a great business;  They should not take this cash the corporation
desparately needs;  We can fix these organization problems and make a
ton of money.

If you did try to do this, what do you think would happen to you?

- Peter    


P.S.  I'm just an engineer who doesn't understand about business matters.

    re 19
    Video on demand?You kidding or what?This business requires three
    things-desk top stuff(=consumer),telco alliances(we may have them) and
    servers(which we do currently have but which over time will be open to
    intense competition).The bottom line is that our added value in this
    business is tenuous long term.Oh BTW,you need content too but by
    definition this is not us.
    So,don't hang your hat on us owning this or any other business.
    re back a few
    What's wrong with not manufacturing anything?Margins might be tight in
    the distribution business but there again the investment and risk is
    lower.Some companies are quite good at this(look at some of the recent
    changes in the chemical industry..)I maintain that we should never have
    started building PCs for example.Do we still produce printers or discs?

re .25

More details:

  While trying to execute the aggressive growth strategy for text terminals,
  the monies for the marketing campaign to promote the new products could
  not be spent for two quarters because the corporation needed to conserve cash.

  Other businesses within C&P were also trying to execute aggressive growth
  plans without a strong base of margins and volumes.  This ended up
  exacerbating the cash flow problem.  Remember at this time, C&P was one
  of the few profitable business units in the company.

I'm sure there are more sides and dimensions to the story, but this
should give some idea of why Digital is selling the VT business and perhaps
a chance to learn from our experience.

- Peter

    I'll ask again; Are the Lan Terminal(s) [eg VT LAN40] going too?
    
    Dave

    We did not sell the network terminals to SunRiver. (aka Lan Terminals)
    New stuff is in development.

Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 11:23:21 -0700
From: ALPHA::hall@decwet.ENET.dec.com (Jon "Maddog" Hall  30-Aug-1995 1421)
To: usg@alpha.ENET.dec.com
Subject: Death of an Era: The sale of the VT business to SunRiver

Hi,

I can not let this go by without saying something about it.

No longer than four hundred years ago, I was in college.  At that time one of 
the first computers I saw was a PDP-8/S.  Attached to it was an ASR-33.

Now for those of you who grew up in the age of workstations, or PCs, and have
never seen an ASR-33, let me tell you that you are blessed.  It was a beast,
stood about four foot high (measured from the floor) and basically did 5 (yes, 
that was FIVE) characters per second.  Note that I said "characters per
second". This was so long ago that we did not even have "CPS", as TLAs had
not been invented yet.

The ASR-33 did upper case most of the time.  This is NOT because a lot of 
Digital Managers were using it, but because it only understood something
called BAUDOT code, which was a five-bit code, and had to use a shift
character to shift between upper and lower case (with a different shift
character to shift between character and numeric mode.....don't ask about
upper case numerics....), so at 5 CHARACTERS PER SECOND it was a lot more
efficient just to stay in one case.

The ASR-33 also had a paper tape reader and punch.  Now in another time and
place I have eulogized over the death of DECtape, and my eulogy has been
written up in "Digital At Work: Snapshots From the First Thirty-Five Years",
as well as being highlighted in the computer museum down in Marlboro, and in
the computer museum in Australia, so I will not belabor the uselessness of
paper tape here.  But I will point out that (in addition to its slowness, noise
and frustration levels in usage), the little punches from the paper tape would
inevitably end up in your ham sandwich.

We suffered the use of the ASR-33 for many years, since we did not have
anything better.  After all, MicroSoft was still fifteen years in the future.
Then along came the TI Silent 700.

The first (to my knowledge) portable terminal, the Silent 700 used thermal 
paper, and could do 30 (thirty) characters/sec.  Notice how we had advanced
by that time.  We had eliminated the word "per", and put in the slash, and
abbreviated "seconds".  This saved us seven keystrokes and (on the average)
five inches of thermal paper per year.  This was important, because not only
was the
thermal paper expensive, but it faded over time.  Therefore it was good to
do unfavorable job performance reviews and poor earnings reports on thermal
paper.  People fought to get the Silent 700s, because (among other nicities)
they were quiet and you could TAKE THEM TO YOUR DESK.

Now again, the concept of "taking the terminal to your desk" may be old hat
to some of you young whipper-snappers, but there was a time when the terminals
were kept in a TERMINAL ROOM, and you had to SIGN UP FOR TIME!!  The concept of
a terminal on everyone's desk was foreign, and quite frankly, who would have
wanted all those little paper punches falling into your coffee, as well
as your sandwich?

After a while, the Silent 700 was killed by a new concept, the CRT.  And one of
the leaders in that field was an upstart company called Digital Equipment
Corporation.  They had this wonderful terminal called the VT05.

Boxy looking, heavy and cumbersome, the VT05 did have several nice features:

	o it was quiet (no motor driving the print head or advancing paper)
	o it was inexpensive to operate (no paper to supply)
	o it had a printer port (to get hard-copy if you wished)

and a number of other features.

The VT series kept advancing, and Digital became the DEFACTO standard in
terminals.  I believe that it was in reference to the VT series that I first
heard the words "DEFACTO standard".  If you were not *VT* compatible, you were
sh......, well, you just did not sell very many terminals.

But the king (or queen, depending on your gender) of all was the VT100
terminal.  This was the star, and the terminal for all other terminals to be
measured by.

When I first ran into the VT100 I was working at Aetna Life and Casualty on
large IBM mainframes.  Since insurance companies are notoriously cheap
we *still* had the "terminal farm", but this time it was made up of
fifteen Lear-Siegler terminals and three VT100s.  Lear-Siegler made a "VT100
clone".  Or tried to.  They would always be breaking down.  The keys would
stick, the keys would double-strike, the tubes would burn out.  In short, the
"Blue Devils" (as they became known) were CR.......well, they weren't very
good.  And we lined up to use the three VT100s, rather than waste our time
trying to use the Devils.

Afterwards the VT series progressed even more, with a concept called
"cursor control", then "REGIS".  You could actually make simple designs
on a character cell terminal, and with low overhead of sending data down the
wire.  This was necessary, since although the VT terminals were capable of
thousands of CPS (yes, we finally made it), the modems of the day were still
at 10 Characters Per Second.  [Did you ever notice that the slower things are
the more you have to type?]

But years go by, and the character cell business slowed.  Everyone wanted
a graphics terminal on their desk, or a PC.  After all, it is hard to play
a decent game of Solitaire on a character-cell terminal.  And I guess it is
time that Digital sell this business, and put those resources into its
core competencies, whatever they may be.

Nevertheless, the VT100 terminal will always be fondly remembered by at least
one old programmer.

And I still have my copy of DECtape at home.

maddog
===============================================================================
DEC press release on sale of "text terminal" business to SunRiver.

===============================================================================
Jon "maddog" Hall			Senior Leader
Mailstop ZK03-2/U15			UNIX Software Group
Digital Equipment Corporation		Internet: maddog@zk3.dec.com
110 Spit Brook Rd.			Voice: 603.881.1341
Nashua, N.H. 03062-2698			Fax: 603.881.6059


 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

 Nice one, but I can't agree that the VT05's were "Boxy looking, heavy
 and cumbersome"; they looked like they came off the bridge of the
 Enterprise, Year One.  

 The VT50s were horrible, all caps, twenty lines, with the
 'F'E'A'T'U'R'E of identifying lowercase letters by preceding them with
 'postrophes.  

 The VT52's had the most wonderful bell (ASCII ctrl-G) in the world, a
 quiet little flutter consisting of eight quick clicks from the
 keyclicker thing.  (I reproduced the VT52 bell on my Lispm years
 later, pioneer audio programmer that I am.)

 Of course, the VT100s will live for many years.  My time-sharing
 system thinks my PC is a VT100 at this very moment and wouldn't have
 it any other way.

 Perhaps the strangest VT100 was the VT103, the first personal
 computer I ever saw, with 32K of memory, a Qbus, and a VLSI-11 chip
 (the details escape me) We actually ran RSX11M on it, multitasking,
 timesharing, ironclad, bulletproof, obsolete even then.

 Tom P.

 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
    

	ahhh yes...fond terminal memories from the distant past....
	ASR-33+PDP/8...this was also my first system, but not in
	college, in 7th grade! being the mature people we were
	at that age, we would each hoard the little paper tape holes
	until we had a sufficiently large collection, then throw same
	at unspecting victims...I agree with -.1 about the VT05s, looked
	very modern and Trekish at the time but boy were they heavy!...
	VT52s were great and it was the first terminal I got to take
	"home" (ok, my frat room in college, quite the hole actually)...
	that and a 300baud modem and I was in heaven coding at all sorts
	of odd hours....I also fondly remember my first VT100; I protected
	it like a mother protects her baby...I honestly believe that it
	noticable improved my work...VT105, VT125, VT220, VT241, VT340,
	VT420; I've used 'em all (even the Gigi (sp?))...but I'm afraid
	their time has past...PCs dominate the landscape now, and
	a good terminal emulator can be way better than the real thing
	these days...now I have an Alpha running Digital UNIX using
	Alfred's wonderful DECterm (dxterm) on one hand, and a PC
	with Windoze and KEAterm on the other (alright, I only use one
	at a time ;-)......

	thanx for bringing back youthful memories, now back to your
	regularly scheduled program (and more C++ drudgeries)...

	_kelley

    re -.2, wasn't that an ASR32, not 33, that ran Baudot? I thought the
    ASR33 was 8 bit, not 5 bit. 
    

I know that many people have ditched their faithful and hard working
terminals in favour of these new fangled workstations and PCs.  Myself,
I have a VAX3100/40 with a GPX display and a nice 19" hi-res colour
monitor.  And what do I use it for?  Displaying lots of DECterm windows,
so it's the equivalent of having half a dozen VTs on my desk!  I still
refuse to use the Notes windows interface, that's for wimps!

I must take issue with the statement that you can't play Solitaire on
a VT though.  I still have a hardcopy printout lying around somewhere
that I got when I was at college of a solitaire game written for a VT100
display, the program was written in DCL if I remember correctly...

I think the oddest (and heaviest) terminal I've ever encountered was this
huge cast iron cuboid thing that was attached to an IBM/360 series.  Now
*that* was strange.

Shows the way things are going, I'm starting to reminisce about the good
ol' days of computing and I'm only 27!

Chris.

    Hey, paper tape punches and readers were not useless!  I remember
    driving out to the Mill to work one weekend, only to find
    the systems all down, so I typed in my code with the punch
    turned on, and Monday fed a zillion feet of paper tape into
    the reader.
    

>    re -.2, wasn't that an ASR32, not 33, that ran Baudot? I thought the
>    ASR33 was 8 bit, not 5 bit. 
    
    Yes, the ASR-33 spoke 7-bit ASCII (with a true 8-bit channel to the
    tape reader/punch), and went at 10 characters/second.  A truly
    impressive piece of mechanical engineering, and amazingly reliable,
    considering how many moving parts it contained.
    
    Only problem I remember was that the tape punch and printer couldn't be
    addressed individually, so you got some interesting printouts whenever
    you punched a binary tape.
    
    John

    
    I think a more important improvement (at least for hardware people) on
    the ASR-33 was the LA30, followed by the LA36, which were electronic
    rather than electro-mechanical, much quieter, and about three times
    faster (300 baud rather than 110 baud).  The LA36 certainly swept its
    way into all the Western Union and newspaper offices, replacing their
    Teletype machines.  I did miss the yellow paper from the Teletypes,
    though.
    
    And when Digital introduced the LA120 (1200 baud and printing on both
    the forward and backward sweep of the printhead), I thought I was in
    heaven - at least once we could get them internally.
    
    Yes, when the history of terminals is compiled, I think Digital will
    stand tallest.  I hate to see that chapter closed.
    
    --Jay
    

    
    	Talk about memories. Am typing this on a VT220 which I will *never*
    give up. Worked my way thru grad school selling those old TI Silent
    700s. And I still agree with Ken about the "usefulness" of PCs in
    virtually any environment (mostly because the dominant O/S sucks,
    batch processing is unknown, and real-time multitasking means "take
    a coffee break").
    
    	Getting out of a cash cow business is stupid. If the C&P unit is
    responsible for screwing this all up, I'd fire every one of them.
    
    	Being dumb is NOT an excuse.
    
    			the Greyhawk

    
    Yeah, I thought the ASR-33 was 7-bit. As I recall, that was the beast
    that could cause a KI-10 to power down when you used it as the console
    terminal and fed it a specific string of characters including BELs.
    

    I just got a call here at the Terminals & Printers Technical Support
    hotline; the customer was looking for replacements for TI Silent 700s.
    
    Until this morning I had never HEARD of these dinosaurs.  However, as a
    direct result of this this notes (quasi-work-related) conference, I
    learned enough to intelligently answer the customer's questions, and to
    recommend a solution. 
    
    Yup, let's get rid of Notes conferences, they waste employee's time.

Word is that Larry Cabrinety is history due to less than desirable Multia 
quality and revenues. This is a loss to the alliance efforts with the Xerox 
account team.

    re .31
    
    Wasn't the VT50 *12* lines and not 20?  Of course, those were 12
    *80-character* lines rather than the VT05's 72-character lines.  
    
    As for "boxy" (and the VT05): I got the impression that the Star Trek
    room at Marlboro (circa 79-82) was probably planned around the VT05s
    and their Popular-Science-appliances-of-the-next-decade look.

  Yes, the VT50 was 12x80, upper-case only.
  The follow-on VT50H offered lower case (I think).
  And the VT52 finally offered 24x80, full ASCII.

  The VT05 was 20x72, upper-case only.

  Interestingly enough, all the keyboards could generate lower case,
  which 'L'E'D 'Y'O'U 'T'O 'T'H'A'T 'I'N'T'E'R'E'S'T'I'N'G TECO 'M'O'D'E.

  And
  sen who can forget the way the VT05 scrolled lines when you didn't
     d the fill characters after each linefeed!

                                   Atlant

>  Interestingly enough, all the keyboards could generate lower case,
>  which 'L'E'D 'Y'O'U 'T'O 'T'H'A'T 'I'N'T'E'R'E'S'T'I'N'G TECO 'M'O'D'E.

for people who want to relive the experience, try logging onto your
local Unix system with an uppercase username!  :)

Chris.

	I heard the same thing about Larry, also heard that back in june
	we had warehouse full of unsold multias with no homes? (>40,000 of 	
	them)...

	Rick

Re .2:

> Management.

Steve, the question was "What is our core COMPETENCY?"  Are we competent at
management?

___Pete

    
    	If true (.45), this is priceless. C&P made a concerted effort to
    "prevent" most sales reps from selling Multia. It was considered
    "their" product to be sold and distributed thru their business model
    only. If an SBU rep had a prospect he had to get the C&P rep to
    actually cover the account and sell the product.
    
    	As far as I'm concerned, those decision-makers are getting exactly
    what they deserve.
    
    	And until we become ONE sales force, selling all Digital products,
    under ONE compensation plan, to all customers; this one step forward,
    two steps back business-on-the-fly stuff will continue.
    
    	What amazes me the most is that H-P and COMPAQ just announced that
    they are "re-combining" their sales forces to get a "better focus on
    their customer requirements and needs."
    
    	Hello, SLT....
    
    
    		the Greyhawk
    		

    We also had a number of sales opportunities for MULTIAs running UNIX,
    but the decision to not allow that sent these customers elsewhere.
    
    Mark
    

    Re: .46
    
    Pete, don't you know sarcasm when you see it?  Since it seems we're
    casting off everything EXCEPT management, that implies that the upper
    echelons think management is our core competency, a view that may
    not be shared by those of us in the mushroom farms.
    
    					Steve

    re .47
    
    Tell me about it, can't sell PC's, can't sell Multia's, the dream
    machine's going to run NT only!!

    
    soon, please.
    

    Psst, Larry... a Pentium-based Multia, TGA with a cheap VGA core,
    running the same software, with 16Mb or 20Mb instead of 24Mb,
    woulda sold like wildfire.

re: Note 4089.52 by PCBUOA::KRATZ

>    Psst, Larry... a Pentium-based Multia, TGA with a cheap VGA core,
>    running the same software, with 16Mb or 20Mb instead of 24Mb,
>    woulda sold like wildfire.
    
    Then how would you sell that LAN terminal thing? 
    

    
    rep -1
    
    I thought this was in the works.
    
    

    re .-1  Pentium Multia in the works
    Yeah, I think it is... hopefully the failure of the LCA(Low Cost Alpha)-
    based Multia won't screw up what is a pretty neat concept.  I always
    wondered whether LCA was Cabrinety's choice or was forced upon him;
    if it was his choice, it's hard to feel sorry.  

    
    Re: .53
    
    >  Then how would you sell that LAN terminal thing? 
    
      LAN Terminal is only a terminal. Runs no apps beyond terminal 
      emulation (well,  unless you count Solitaire and Mine Sweeper).
      The LAN Terminal lists at around $1200... you'll never get a 
      Pentium based Multia anywhere in that ballpark.

>>>      The LAN Terminal lists at around $1200... you'll never get a 
>>>      Pentium based Multia anywhere in that ballpark.

A Starion 910 is regularly $1699.00, EPP discounted to $1360.00.  Just add 
an ethernet adapter and software to get a LAN terminal.  The system price 
will probably drop within the next six months as Intel phases out the 75Mhz 
CPUs.  A 66Mhz 486 probably has all the power you need for a LAN terminal. 
I'm using one now to enter this note with Teamlinks conferencing.  The 486 
systems are really cheep now, probably below $1200.00


							-Paul
   

    
    > Just add an ethernet adapter and software to get a LAN terminal.
    
    No, you get pc that has to be managed and can be hopelessly screwed
    by non-sophisticated users in a moment's time requiring much time to
    recover. You get similar functionality... but it misses the most 
    important goals: terminal-like supportability.

RE:     > Just add an ethernet adapter and software to get a LAN terminal.

Let me re-emphasize the point in .-1

When I first saw the Multia presentation I thought the exact same thing: why
should we sell a bounded product that could only do a few things, had no
expandability, and which could be duplicated by any decent computer weenie
for less money?

My customers have re-adjusted my thinking on this.  They don't see a bounded
and limited PC, they see a very functional terminal.  It is the *fact* that
it cannot be upgraded, the *fact* that it has no diskette or CD-ROM drive,
the *fact* that the disk inside cannot be written by the user, that they 
absolutely **LOVE**!

Many of these people have in fact designed and deployed PCs which attempted to
be Multias.  After fighting with DOS to get the hardware to work, being very
frustrated in getting enough low memory free to do anything after loading all
of the network images they needed to communicate, having to figure out how to
deploy this system after ripping out the diskette drives (simple with 1 or 2,
a logistical nightmare with 100s of PCs to deploy), and counting up the costs
of the additional Ethernet cards and all of the software packages needed, they
ended up with desktop devices which their end-users quickly discovered how to
"customize".  By customize I mean:

1) delete critical files ("What does 'C:\ DEL *.*' do?")

2) install other packages ("Look at this neat GIF I got from the Internet!")

3) modify .INI files so the system no longer works ("I swear I didn't touch
   ANYTHING, but the system stopped working...")

4) install new hardware ("Oh, come on, it's a PC and I REALLY need this sound
   card to do my data entry job. And I know all about PCs, I have one at home.
   Wrist strap?  What's a wrist strap?"  <SPARK> (smell of smoke))

5) etc, etc

It turns out the really easy Multia sales are those where people have actually
done a deployment like this.  The next easiest are those where the end-user
support groups have some say in the matter.  The toughest is where the customer
is slightly PC literate and thinks just like you do and I did: that he could
build it himself...  But I always invite him to do so, and make a point of 
calling back in 3-4 months.  Usually I can make a real easy Multia sale... :-)

-- Ken Moreau

	re: last two: bounded systems...

	some customers do indeed like the idea; they tend to be those
	companies whose IS-centric cultures survived the 80's intact...
	other customers totally resent them....we've been through
	this exercize many many time: VAXmate and 433W come to mind
	(and did back when Multia was announced); neither of those
	products took the industry by storm although some would
	argue that they were at least mildly successful...apparently
	the same can be said for Multia....

	all of this comes from a company (us) that for many years had
	a "terminal" mindset thrust upon us from the highest levels...
	one of Ken's strongest notions was that "most folks need no more
	on their desk than a terminal"...(this is right up there with
	"PCs are toys" and "UNIX is snake-oil")...the market at
	large seems to have disagreed with this concept, possible
	for the wrong reasons, although that is moot....

	so, can Multia be a "success"? IMHO as long as it continues
	to be a "terminal", its future is limited...

	$.02 fwiw etc.

	_kelley

People don't fundamentally want a PC on their desk.  What they want
is quick and easy access to the information and tools to do their job.
Over the last decade, PCs have offered a superior combination of
power, ease of use, and flexibility for working with information.
This is partly a result of good design, but more importantly, it
reflects the market dynamics of a low cost, relatively standard,
extremely high volume computing platform that huge numbers of
people can build on and refine.

As maintream computing shifts from being PC and Application centric
to being more Network and Document centric, it is reasonable to ask
whether a desktop device as complex and expensive (in human terms)
as the PC is the optimal solution for every user?

Multia is both a product and evolutionary development effort that
explores this question.  The Multia product to date has not been a
huge commercial success due to a number of startup problems (incomplete
functionality, poor positioning, mismatched sales and distribution
channels...), but I would argue that the underlying concept is sound
and represents a significant opportunity for Digital.

A Pentium Multia could offer exciting performance, integration,
ease of use, and lower cost.  The challenge I see is how to successfuly
position and sell the product in a market dominated by traditional PC
thinking.

- Peter

    Please bear with me on my lack of detail, but this conversation around
    the Multia reminds me of an article I read a few days ago. Apparently
    Bill Gates and Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle) we at some high profile IT
    conference in Europe recently. THis conference apparently is attended
    by CIOs of some of the largest companies in the world and is basically
    used as a forum for industry leaders to predict where IT is moving in
    the future. (Anyone know the name of the conference I'm talking about?)
    Anyway, apparently Gates and Ellison had quite a debate over the future
    of the PC. Of course Gates said the PC was going to become THE platform
    of the future, eliminating the need for anything larger than a Pentium
    server anywhere in the network. Ellison's view was that the PC was
    going to die and "network terminals" would take over for access to
    distributed applications. The Multia sounds exactly like what Ellison
    was talking about.
    
    Anyone have more details? It will interesting to see who (if either of
    them) will be right.
    
    Debbie
    

    Keep in mind Ellison was in France at the time, which is in love
    with that concept (MiniTel terminals)... i.e. tell the audience
    what they want to hear. 

    Multia would be great if it could emulate today's PC's as opposed to
    yesterday's PC's. 
    
    It can only run 286 apps, which is kind of a problem!!

>    It can only run 286 apps, which is kind of a problem!!

Not true!  It can also run native Alpha applications.  Both of them.

j.

    Other vendors who get their x86 emulation from the same source as us
    are happily talking about 486 emulation. Some Alpha vendors are even
    talking publically about x86 translation. Stay tuned.
    
    But Multia isn't an x86 PC. And to a lot of people, that's a plus.
    
    I think the "manageable desktop appliance" concept is neat. I think
    there are a lot of large and medium companies out there who are
    realising that PC=>DOS+Win3.11=>anarchy. Unfortunately these corporates
    are probably exactly the ones where the traditional Digital sales model
    was right, and the multia channels sales model wasn't right. Ho hum.
    
    Like much of Digital, I was a late arrival to PCs. They can be an
    excellent tool, but having sat next to a group who Digital acquired in
    the early 90s, and listened to them spending half their days struggling
    against the PC, I decided maybe the PC (or maybe DOS/Win3.1?) wasn't
    the panacea some would have us believe.
    
    Now my team are fortunate enough to all have PCs of their own. And we
    now know just what anarchy means... I couldn't wait, I bought one - but
    it runs Windows NT as much as Win3.11.
    
    regards
    john

Call me old fashioned if you like, but when it comes down to data retrieval
I think that in many cases a carefully designed user interface on a
character cell terminal is hard to beat.  In many cases, it's often much
better than the flashy bells and whistles user interface that many PC
applications offer, which look pretty, but for speed and ease of use are
often lacking.

Bring back paper tape!  :)

Chris.

> Bring back paper tape!  :)

-------------------------------------------------------------------
             OOOO    O     O   OOOO    O     O     O
            O    O   O    O   O    O    O   O     OOO
            O    O   O   O    O    O     O O      OOO
  ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
            O    O   OOOO     OOOOOO      O       OOO
            O    O   O   O    O    O      O        O
            O    O   O    O   O    O      O
            O    O   O     O  O    O      O       OOO
             OOOO    O      O O    O      O       OOO
-------------------------------------------------------------------


                                   Atlant


PS: Would you pick up the chad, please?

    comments on a few prior notes
    
    "PCs keep getting cheaper"
    
    I think this statement is responsible for our decision to sell the
    terminals business.  
    
    Really, IT ISN'T TRUE!.  A better phrasing is:
    
    "For a given price, functionality of a PC contiues to go up".  
    
    In the days of 8086 most PCs sold for $2000-$3000.  The cheapest would
    sell for about $1200.  If you found anything cheaper, it was an 
    inventory close out.  Today it's the same.  The two grand machine  is
    a "fast Pentium" (which will be a "home machine" in 18 months).  The
    $1200 machine is a middling fast-486.  It's inherent in the technology
    that PCs don't sell for less than a $1000.  Disk drives are the same.
    Every year the megabytes-per-dollar double.  The cost of the first 10
    megabytes doesn't change.  A network PC has a street price of at least 
    $1450; the LAN Terminal has a street price of $1050.  A VT terminal costs
    $300-$500.  PCs can never get that cheap.
    
    At $1200, a PC is cheap,....IF YOU NEED A PC.  Many people don't.
    
    You can divide the work peole do in a busines environment between
    "unstructured work" ( the things that enigneers and managers and marketing
    people do) and "structured work".  Examples of structured work are order
    entry, AP, inventory management and production control.  In structured
    work you have many people doing the same things,  hitting the same data 
    base at the same time.  The LAN Terminal is designed for this work.  For 
    structured work it's great.  Cheap, easy to use, reliable and has 
    terminals-like support costs.  If you do unstructured work, buy a PC or a 
    Multia.  If the work is structured, a terminal or LAN Terminal is better.  
    
    The terminals business will be around for a long time.  A terminal will 
    always be the lowest cost device and also the cheapest to support.  
    We could have pulled a lot of cash from the business over the next few
    years.  SUN River got a great business franchise.  I bet they got it
    at a great price.  I think I'll check out their stock.
    
      

    		oooooooooooooooooooo	ooo
    	oo	ooo	ooo	oooo	oooo	oo	o	o
    oooo	oo	oo  oo		  
    					oooo
    oooo	oo					oooo
    
    
    	I got this chad from my customer which still uses paper tape.
    
    	Frank %-)

>    years.  SUN River got a great business franchise.  I bet they got it
>    at a great price.  I think I'll check out their stock.
    
    well, the people on the street people checked it out faster!! Sun
    River is owned by All Quote Inc (symbol ALQT ). It was trading at 1
    at the begining of Aug. It went upto about 4, and has since then pulled 
    back slightly to 3+.

Re: .63
    
Subj:	2 different views on desktop devices for Internet access.

  IDGNS 09/04/95 02:19:17 PM
  News: IT Forum: Ellison, Gates Jockey for Position on Info HighwayBy Marc 
  Ferranti
  IDG News Service, Paris Bureau  
  
       PARIS (09/04/95) - Oracle Corp.'s Larry Ellison and Microsoft 
  Corp.'s Bill Gates today offered vastly different visions of how today's 
  computer companies will be able to plug into the consumer market of the 
  future. 
        The two information technology industy leaders both said, however, 
  that the Internet is helping to move the industry from a desktop-centric 
  to a network-centric view of computing. Gates, Ellison and market 
  analysts spoke to the European IT Forum 1995, sponsored by 
  market-research company International Data Corp. 
        Widespread interest in the Internet and the convergence of the 
  computer, broadcast and consumer electronics industries are providing new 
  opportunities for IT companies, according to David Moschella, a senior 
  vice president at IDC. 
        Moschella said the big question for the IT industry is whether "PC 
  companies transform themselves to take advantage of the revolution in 
  communications." 
        As examples of what Oracle is doing to take advantage of the 
  exploding interest in the Internet, Ellison today showed off upcoming 
  Oracle Web server and browser software. 
         Oracle has the upper hand in efforts to deliver multimedia content 
  to users over the Internet, said Ellison, because the company is focused 
  on database technology. 
        "Oracle does one thing, and one thing only, very well -- we deliver 
  vast amounts of data to users," he said. 
         To demonstrate that the company is on track to bring its database 
  technology to the Internet, Ellison showed off how Oracle's new World 
  Wide Web software could be used to dial from Paris into a server in 
  California. 
        Using the Web browser, Ellison dialed over an ISDN line into the 
  company's Web server, located in California, and proceeded to pick 
  selections from a music library, listening to songs from various artists 
  and playing a music video. 
         "The Internet Web browser browses video and is programmable ... it 
  has the Java language built into it," said Ellison, explaining that the 
  browser can be programmed to search on user-defined criteria. The Java 
  language is an Oracle authoring tool that allows users to download 
  executable prgrams from the Internet or other networks. The new browser 
  is also NetScape compatible, Ellison added. 
        Ellison said that Oracle was trying to coordinate the timing of the 
  new Internet tools and the new version of the company's database, but 
  even if the new tools -- set for release in Novemeber -- are available 
  first, they will be incorporated into Oracle 7.3 as soon as it is 
  available. 
       The new programmable Web tools are easy enough to use to let 
  consumers explore the Internet on their own, said Ellison. 
       "The Micosoft Network is probably the last of the on-line services 
  to be built on the Club Med model -- come on in and you're safe," said 
  Ellison. "The Internet model is a little riskier but richer culturally." 
        Ellison's vision of what the PC will look like in the near future 
  also differed from the vision offered by Gates later in the day. 
        "We believe the world is moving from a desktop point of view to a 
  network-centric point of view, and when you have a network-centric point 
  of view you don't need a device as complicated as a PC," said Ellison. 
  "You can get a terminal for as much as US$400 to $500." 
        In Ellison's view, software, applications and content will reside 
  on the network, and users will have terminals in their homes to select 
  what they want from the network. Users will want to avoid PC hardware and 
  support services that cost up to $5,000 per year per desktop, said 
  Ellison. 
        The device that consumers will want can be considered a type of 
  "Internet appliance," Ellsion said. 
         "A PC is a ridiculous device; the idea is so complicated and 
  expensive," he said. "What the world really wants is to plug into a wall 
  to get electronic power and plug in to get data." 
        Gates, speaking later in the morning, also focused on the 
  communications theme. 
        "Multimedia is becoming standard on PCs," Gates said. "The key 
  theme is the idea of the PC as communication tool." 
        However, Gates differed sharply from Ellison in his vision of the 
  future form of the PC. PCs will not turn into dumb terminals, said Gates, 
  and will need intelligence and storage capacity. 
        "You'll still need a way of storing the applications that you 
  download from the network, and your personal data," said Gates. 
        But PCs will be transformed, he said. 
        "You'll find that the PC will take on new forms; wallet PCs will be 
  carried around and you'll see kiosk PCs and portable PCs that will all be 
  hooked up into a unified network that provides a rich set of 
  applications." 
        Gates also said that over the next year, Microsoft will work with a 
  major computer vendor to develop a wallet-sized PC, a concept that he has 
  often expounded on during keynote speeches but the likes of which has 
  never come to market. This could be in part to the lack of success that 
  other handheld computers have experienced, he noted. 
         "I expected [Apple Computer Inc.'s] Newton and General Magic 
  [Inc.] to do better, it's stunning how poorly those products have done," 
  he said. 
       Yet Microsoft remains committed to the walet PC, he said, and plans 
  to co-develop a product that will carry a price tag of under US$500, that 
  will have good wireless communications abilities, and that will provide 
  connectivity with PCs, he said. 
         Microsoft is also working with telecommunications companies to 
  develop telecom infrastructures so that the cost of communication-- apart 
  from data and content--will be "almost free." 
        Though Gates' and Ellison's ideas about how the PC will change 
  differed, most speakers agreed that communications is the central theme 
  to today's IT industry. 
        "This is the most exciting period in our industry since the 
  beginning of the peronal computer industry," said IDC's Moschella. "The 
  industry has rediscovered a sense of mission." 
       (Additional reporting by Cara A. Cunningham, IDG News Service Paris 
  correspondent) 
       
  
  [Copyright 1995 IDG News Service, International Data Group Inc. All 
  rights reserved.]

	gawd...Ellison sounds just like KO did for all those years...
	'tis probably a good thing for him he's not in the hardware
	business ;-)

	_kelley

> Ellison sounds just like KO did for all those years...

Ellison will say anything for money.  And there's the difference: "for
money".

___Pete

    The power of the computer to affect the world lies directly in its
    capacity to expand the intellectual range of users. Those who
    believe that users might want to be nothing more than receptacles
    for "vast amounts of data" that somebody else created have an
    unnecessarily limited model in mind--limited from the prespective of increasing our
    human capacities. The model should be one in which we can BOTH recieve
    information easily from anywhere that it resides in the world, and in
    any format, but also that we have a tool which allows ANYONE to create
    information and make it available to anyone in the world who might need
    it. This model implies functions that are "networked PC-like." 
    If some people want terminals that's fine. But it is limited.
    
    I would compare the "terminal only" world-view as something akin to
    the old idea about a learned priesthood dispensing information to a
    populace that is deemed incapable of anything but consumption.
    
    The "PC" view is something akin to a schoolroom in which we can find
    pencils,crayons, tools, whatever. And the "schoolroom" largely is of our own
    making.I has our selection of tools, and links, and conversations.  
    
    The internet grew up as a distributed, mutli-participant, peer to peer
    conversation about whatever, as determined by whomever was talking. The
    notion that this wonderful capability might somehow or other be reduced
    to a giant one-way pipeline stuck down my throat -----well it makes me
    gag, as they say.  Luckily, I think it is still up to us to keep it open for
    the conversations that count and the creativity that comes of many
    people writing and making images etc. etc.as they choose to do.
      
    So let's hear it for a world of increasingly available tools that
    support the increase of human intellectual potential. That's a world
    of creation as well as consumption. That's world of increasingly
    avialable, simple, pc-like tools, and the ability to communicate easily
    and freely ina two way dialogue.
     
        

>    I would compare the "terminal only" world-view as something akin to
>    the old idea about a learned priesthood dispensing information to a
>    populace that is deemed incapable of anything but consumption.

Nope.  The "terminal only" world-view is akin to the idea of a 
few powerful players in the "entertainment industry" grabbing control
of an otherwise democratic medium in order to sell you stuff.  The bit
about consumption is spot-on though.

    There is a story in the WSJ about C&P business unit.  I don't know the
    date though, somebody had photocopied it and posted on the bulletin
    board.  
    
    There is also another story from Boston Globe reported in VNS
    14-Sep-1995 edition.  
    
    http://expat.zko.dec.com/htbin/vns_archive?3388#VNS_COMPUTER_NEWS
    
    - Vikas

    Someone should post the WSJ article.  It says Larry is really grumpy about
    getting fired.  Larry said that $300 million in sales were pulled from
    him and given to other business units, which is why he didn't make his
    numbers.  Said he's talking to lawyer.
    
     

    I got the impression that Larry's Multia was actually taking sales
    away from Workstations.  There's a number of notes in the Multia notes
    file about trying to get it to run things like MicroStation, which
    really should be taken care of by the Workstation group's boxes.
    The real issue: who's idea was it to use LCA in Multia?  That's the
    person that should be jettisoned.  If it was Larry, then the Edsel
    was of his making.  .02 Kratz

    LCA did not deliver on its promise of providing a cost effective Alpha
    (with expected Alpha *performance*) implementation.  C&P BU planned and
    delivered multiple products based on LCA.  None of them could have been
    done with any other Alpha processor at that time.  It is unfortunate
    that LCA came way short of its performance goal leaving C&P holding the
    proverbial bag.  RICKS::DECHIPS confence might be a better place to do
    the post-mortem on that issue though.
    
    It is interesting to note that IBM just came up with so called
    SuperClient based upon PowerPC chip.  Looks almost like next generation
    Multia!
    
    - Vikas

    IMHO, MULTIA's are the perfect desktop, but PC's are more visible to
    the corporate descion makers.
    
    . PC's are kludgie
    . unstable operating systems, and app's
    . ask a dozen people their opinion and you will get 2 doz opinions.
    . PC's have too many variables, and hidden costs to be effective
    desktop, multitasking windowing devices for integrated client/server 
    OVMS/UNIX/Msoft/WNT environments.
    . I vote for a strong desktop device, with gobs of memory, easy to
    integrate, into a wide hetrogeneous multi operating system,
    multitasking, multiwindows, simple network management.
    .  MULTIA seems to fit this.
    
    
    Why are we not selling very many?
    
    
    
    --GP
    
    I want/need a desktop device that can be easily managed