Conference 7.286::digital

    Just type $ to get to DCL.
    
    Anyway - ALL-IN-1 is a "service" supplied to support your business
    "functions".  If You need VMS level services to do your job - what's
    the problem?
    
    For instance,  I store DOCUMENT files on my mail account in a VMS
    subdirectory - I don't need or use ALL-IN-1 even though my mail account
    logs me into it when I log in.
    
    I also spend quite a bit of time in VTX and NOTES - even though I can
    access them from ALL-IN-1, why should I take up the process service
    overhead?
    
    Have fun!
    
    tjb

If your system is being provided by the information services group, meaning
that your cost center is charged quarterly for your ALL-IN-1 account, I
would limit use of the system within the confines intended.

If your account is set CAPTIVE, e.g., you can't SPAWN from VML (VAXmail),
and the "DCL" command is not implemented on your AI1 menu, then you may
indeed take those as hints regarding the intended use of your system.

On the other hand, VTX, NOTES, ELF, and other facilities should all be
accessible from your AI1 menu. If you need DCL to access these, then you
are not "perverting" the intention of the system, as part of the charter
of the system you are using is to provide access to information within
Digital.

This is neither a new issue nor question. And, I am sure, someone in
DIS (or tis new acronym) will now go off hunting to make sure that DIS
managed systems disable some of the means of DCL access you documented.

A stone better left unturned.

/Peters

    From the user's point of view:
    
    If there's some discrepency between what you need to do in the
    accomplishment of your job functions and what access controls have been
    placed on your account, then please contact your system manager.
    
    If that doesn't get a satisfactory resolution, contact your manager.
    
    From a system manager's point of view:
    
    VMS has adequate access controls.  Understand them and implement them
    correctly.  Users make a game of avoiding them.  On the other hand, if
    managers have made dumb decisions restricting users from doing useful
    work, you ought to speak up for the users.
    
    For those who may not know,  it's routine to assign ALL-IN-1 (a
    trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation) accounts that inadequately
    restrict access to DCL as indicated in the previous replies.

    
    First, to put what I'm about to say in the correct context. I'm an IM&T
    (the "new" name of DIS; you can't be any good if you haven't changed
    your name in the last 12 months, BTW) Consultant who believes DCL
    access should be avaiable upon request.
    
    Most I.S. system managers are aware of the methods you mentioned. Some
    can be disabled but most can't, at least not without a significant
    amount of work. The reasons for captive accounts have evolved over the
    last 3-4 years and now mainly aren't security related but instead
    are support issues. 
    
    We allow DCL access to people who can show a need, not just a desire.
    We've had people in the past demand DCL as more of a status symbol and,
    having the poltical clout to overrule our best judgement, have been
    granted it. Some of those same people then end up deleting their
    ALL-IN-1 subdirectory tree and cause themselves, and us, a lot of grief
    and work. These are the people we're concerned about.
    
    We don't install some products for just these reasons. You usually
    won't find compilers on I.S. systems since we don't want them used for
    development.
    
    The only problem with using the ALL-IN-1 systems for other products is
    that they often have a different usage profile. I mean that mail usage
    is normally a quick on-work-off using a large amount of resources (such
    as CPU) while using something like Notes could mean a long session with
    light resource usage. Trying to satisfy both profiles with VERY limited
    hardware budget is a real pain. You can use a low login limit to ensure
    decent performance for the ALL-IN-1 users but then a Notes user would
    block an ALL-IN-1 user, which is usually the "main" charter of the
    system. 
    
    Anyway, I wouldn't be too concerned about it. I would suggest you
    contact your support group and request DCL access. You may get it.
    
    -Ray
    

    I wonder how long it will before someone (probably a system
    manager) sends mail or (more likely) calls up a moderator and
    demands that .0 be deleted as a "security violation"{

    RE: .0 If you need DCL access and your system manager does not
    give it to you without you playing silly games then your manager
    has a clear action item{to get that fixed. A managers job is to
    get her people the things they need to do their job.

    		Alfred

	re .0:

	Firstly, the fact that you are asking this question at all shows
	clearly that you are either fairly new to Digital, or one of the
	minority of very honest, innocent, straightfoward people who tend
	to fit poorly into organizational life.

	I believe that most of us would "do what's right", taking into
	consideration such questions as

	"Is what I need to do going to earn revenue for the company, help
	 a customer, or otherwise accomplish something useful?"

	"In practice, am I likely to be able to do what I need to by going
	 through channels in less than, say, 2 or 3 months?"

	"Will anyone give me credit for going through channels?"

	"Who does this equipment belong to anyway?"

	"Are the people who manage this equipment in any way measured on
	 the revenue earned, customers satisfied, or any other real metric
	 of business success? (or are they just there to make sure the
	 inmates don't escape?)"

	Denunciations of the compulsory ALL-IN-1 which is rammed down
	peoples' throats has become so widespread that it is often
	considered an unacceptable rathole. There are notes in this and
	other conferences in which people who just want to get their work
	done have alternated literally hundreds of replies with other
	people who feel that ALL-IN-1 is actually a contribution to
	civilization. Everyone feels sick of the whole issue.

	However, your base note addresses it, so for the record, here goes.
	<flame on>:

	* ALL-IN-1 was a good office system for selling large computer
	  configurations to naive customers who had large amounts of
	  money, and neither knew nor wanted to know anything about
	  computers. (IMHO, this description is a poor fit for Digital,
	  but I could be wrong). In case anyone still doesn't know, the
	  recommended prerequisites for ALL-IN-1 are about 5 times the
	  CPU power for the same number of VMS users - memory and disk
	  needs are also high. This is actually good for a vendor,
	  like Digital, which still makes most of its money from hardware sales.

	* ALL-IN-1 made a creditable attempt at giving users some of the
	  benefits of the workstation environment before there were
	  workstations - such as menu interfaces and a common look and
	  feel.

	* In the early days, ALL-IN-1 sales lagged because there were
	  too few experts in the field. Some bright spark decided the
	  right way to handle this was to force everybody in the company
	  to use ALL-IN-1 for everything all the time (all the time they
	  could get logged in and get a response in less than half an hour,
	  that is). As a result:

		- The company spent something like $500 million equipping
		  everybody with vast VAXclusters that would allow most
		  of the users to get an acceptable response time (remember,
		  about a quarter of that would have sufficed had they
		  just used vanilla VMS).

		- The company noticed that this was a lot of money, so it
		  also kindly provided a large IS organization to "manage"
		  and "measure" it all, and make sure that the stupid,
		  malicious, computer-illiterate users didn't mess things
		  up. IS was provided with as many people as it needed,
		  together with offices, equipment, and an imposing
		  management edifice.

		- In this company which introduced the Programmable Date
		  Processor to liberate customers from the tyranny of the
		  whitecoated MIS staff who owned the mainframe in the
		  refrigerated glasshouse, we started to pay a large
		  number of IS staff to own mainframes in refrigerated
		  glasshouses, and measured them on their success in
		  preventing individual users doing what they needed and
		  wanted to do. Instead, IS asked the users' managers what
		  the users needed to do. The managers, who didn't use
		  computers anyway, left it very much up to them.

		- The IS staff who were being paid to maintain these large
		  ALL-IN-1 systems quickly discovered that they needed to
		  impose proper SECURITY. Otherwise the users could start
		  doing their own thing. So their first step was to deny
		  all the users privileges, and then to restrict them to
		  ALL-IN-1. (An IS system manager once told me that I wasn't
		  allowed DCL access because VMS "was insecure"). Ask yourself:
		  whom does this regime benefit most: the company, the
		  users (aka salesmen, specialists, marketeers, managers,
		  etc) - or the system managers?

		- At first (for the first few years of ALL-IN-1), the people
		  who had decided everyone should use ALL-IN-1 didn't notice
		  that this required 5 times as much hardware. So they didn't
		  budget any extra hardware, with the simple result that only
		  20% of the users could get logged in at any one time. Response
		  was so poor that most people gave up trying to use anything
		  except mail. This had some hilarious consequences: when I
		  finally managed to acquired a MicroVAX II for my group of
		  6 people back in 1985, my manager solemnly told me that
		  nobody was to be allowed to use it for mail, otherwise
		  it would grind to a halt. Since we used VMS, however, we
		  happily used mail (and Notes, and VTX, and Ada, and Rdb,
		  and RALLY, and...) without ever experiencing slow response.

		- Management was very happy that our new IS experts were
		  taking care of all the system management (an unpleasant
		  chore), thus turning loose a lot of software specialist
		  hours to do useful work - like presales. After a few
		  years, however, they began to notice that not as many
		  people seemed to be available with good system management
		  skills (or programming, or performance analysis, or...)
		  This inexplicable trend weas very embarrassing, since
		  there was strong customer demand for precisely those
		  skills.

		- However, some managers then came up with a brilliant new
		  idea: let's *merge* IS with Software Services, and call the
		  resulting organisation EIS. Then all these skilled system
		  managers, programmers,  performance analysts, etc. from
		  IS, can go out and consult with customers. (The way software
		  specialists used to do as a matter of course, before they
		  were prevented from managing their own systems). What a
		  stroke of genius! First, split something perfectly effective
		  in two artifical pieces. Then, a few years later, stick
		  them back together. Two lots of managers become heroes,
		  nobody notices that the net result is more or less to
		  restore the status quo (because managers are careful
		  never to remember the past)... and what's more, somewhere
		  along the line we've probably made room for a few hundred
		  extra managers, which has got to be good news.

		- It became awfully difficult to find enough people with
		  system management skills to run the proliferating IS
		  clusters around the world. No problem, management hired
		  lots of contractors in. Thus, in 1985 I moved from a job
		  in the UK CSC where I was providing national-level support
		  on VMS internals, to a job as a SWAS specialist - and
		  suddenly found that my horizons had narrowed from SETPRV,
		  XDELTA and hardware access to a captive ALL-IN-1 account,
		  and being barred from the computer room. To get anything
		  additional, I had to ask a downy-cheeked youth who had
		  been hired as an operator but became system manager of
		  the ALL-IN-1 systems for an entire Region - by default.
		  Over the years, this guy went on courses, learned by
		  trial and error, until he became very expert and
		  knowledgeable. At which point, of course, he left Digital
		  and is now making a very lucrative living as a freelance
		  consultant and journalist. Digital, for its part, has the
		  satisfaction of knowing that it has ploughed several years
		  of expensive formal and informal training into this person,
		  and sent him forth into the world to become rich. Who says
		  altruism is dead? And... er... we are still short of
		  system managers.

	* Some brave or lucky people, who managed to get permission from
	  their managers, set up their own standalone systems - often
	  workstations or LAVcs - and ran them themselves. This took up
	  some time (quite a lot of time, actually) but did enable them
	  to become familiar with all the things that don't mix with
	  ALL-IN-1. These people (including most of Corporate Engineering)
	  still have trouble interfacing with the ALL-IN-1 mail system
	  used by IS and its captives (including the whole sales force and
	  most of marketing).

	* It sounds logical to "use what we sell" - until you start to
	  think about all the other things we sell that ALL-IN-1 doesn't
	  allow us to use. For instance, there must be several dozen
	  people (if not several hundred) in the UK trained on ALL-IN-1.
	  There are about 2 trained on Ada (which takes less time to
	  learn, but which cannot be used from a captive ALL-IN-1 account).
	  Yet last quarter in the UK, VAX Ada brought in more revenue to
	  Digital than did ALL-IN-1. That's just my favourite gripe.
	  ALL-IN-1 also precludes use of all workstation software whatever,
	  all UNIX software whatever, all programming languages and CASE
	  tools, all DECtp products except perhaps RALLY and TEAMDATA,
	  all real time products, imaging, desktop publishing, CDA, and
	  almost all of NAS. Oh, and anything to do with VMS, of course.

	* What are we going to do now? When ALL-IN-1 supports workstations,
	  will sales people be encouraged to use those? They still won't
	  learn about all the standard workstation facilities which ALL-IN-1
	  bars them from. What if they want to use UNIX? Will IS give them
	  Uniplex systems?

	* Today, Digital confronts a major crisis. We need to realize
	  more revenue and in particular, higher margins - which means
	  essentially selling software and consultancy, but mainly
	  software. This is happening at a time when our traditional hardware
	  base is being eroded by Open Systems. We are effectively headcount
	  frozen, with a goal of reducing our headcount. Yet we need to
	  provide customers with rapid, flexible access to expertise which
	  not only understands VMS, UNIX, MS-DOS, OSF/1, and NAS, plus
	  all of the hundreds of layered products, but is able to integrate
	  them deftly and selectively to address specific customer
	  requirements. In other words, we need people who are highly
	  motivated, who know a great deal about software and applications,
	  and who are able to go on learning at a great pace. And we need
	  a lot of these people. Are we going to develop them by confining
	  our sales  and sales support force in ALL-IN-1 captive accounts?

	/Tom

		

	Whow! At least, now I know that there are other people than me who
have 'strong feelings' (to stay polite) against All-in-1...

	It's true I don't like it either. I never used seriously anything else
than the EM menus. But I like this UDP feature which I have programmed to
create for me a DECwindows terminal on my station just by hitting F20...
I run 'hole-in-1' in client server mode too. Through a decwindows terminal,
triggered by DCL transparent task-to-task communication!

	The reason why I use DCL from All-in-1 is... the DECNet address of my
station! Here in Europe, we are short of DECNet addresses, so we have found
a hack, called 'hidden area' which allows to have more than one system with the
same DECnet address on the same network. The only problem is that those systems
cannot connect to any node outside their own LAN (ethernet segment, if you 
prefer); all the DECnet packets are thrown away the first time they reach a
router. All stations, PCs, small systems have received such addresses in order
to free up good addresses for the big glassroom machines; my one just happens to
be one of those poor systems which cannot see the rest of the world...

	This means that I need a machine which a unique node address to perform
all network access: mail, notes, vtx, ftsv, remote rdb ... I also can use
"poor man's routing" with some tools (like notes, look at the header of this
reply) but I find it slow and inneficient.

	I'm not that new to DIGITAL (4 years) but I recently came across note
593 of this conference, which points out an issue which I find related to mine:
the difference between what is considered ethical and what the systems allow you
to do. It's also similar it the fact that the conclusions which a manager
could arrive to about this - blessing or punishment - will strongly depend on
his mood, position, feelings, personal view... That's why I decided to ask.

	Given the fact that I'm not using any 'cracking' technique, but just
trying to be smarter than the sysmgt team (you're right to point out that
finding ways to trespassing those not-totally-closed doors is an amazing
challenge - at least for me...), I would consider very negatively to be
sanctionned for doing it...

RE: 1382.6

As a member of ALL-IN-1 product management and former field SWS body, I feel
the need to provide another version of the facts presented in .6.  Since I
am based in the US, there may be some internal implementation differences 
due to geography but I think the gist of what I have to say crosses most
boundaries.

ALL-IN-1 is a good office system.  It is certainly true that we sell lots 
of it (more revenue than any software except VMS & DECnet) and a lot of times
it is sold to people who do not know or want to know anything about computers.
.6 is correct in suggesting that it is unusual for DEC to sell anything like
that, but its success should perhaps indicate maybe we try to do more of it.

ALL-IN-1's sales never really lagged in the early days.  We have been
profitable since the first quarter we were productized.  When field people
got more up to speed, we sold even more of it.  In a typical year, ALL-IN-1
accounts for $1,300,000,000 of hardware, software, & services CERTS.

The point of using A1 in field offices for mail was because DECmail was
widely used and it was going away.  The original motivation for the captive
A1 accounts was simply that the machines used for DECmail were too small
to allow people to do ALL-IN-1 and other things as well.

I'm sure Tom is right that we spent $500 million on "vast VAXclusters" but
I don't think it was motivated by the change to A1.  When I joined the company
in 1984, we didn't have much in the way of computing in field offices.  The
investment in field computing was something whose time had come.  I think it
is unfair and inappropriate to say that the need was predicated on the ALL-IN-1
rollout.  Those computers were needed because there WEREN'T ANY.

I wouldn't dream of commenting on where the IS organization came into this.

Saying that ALL-IN-1 needs 5 times as much hardware as VMS is like saying
that a banana isn't very good when used as a hammer.  If the tool that you
need is VMS, then you should have the access to VMS that you need.  There are
plenty of people in this company (I mean LOTS) for whom ALL-IN-1 is a useful
tool upon which they rely to get their work done.  For them, the amount of
VMS resources consumed is irrelevant.  They just want to get their job done.

Giving them the "more efficient" VMS would be pointless, as they wouldn't
get anything done in the user unfriendly "$" environment.  Just ask any of
A1's 4 million users around the world.  If you want to see how effective
ALL-IN-1 can be, talk to one of your sales people.  They love their customer
provided A1 accounts whether or not they like their account at their local
office.  It's been our experience that none of the local office ALL-IN-1's
provide site-specific capabilities (like order tracking) tailored to the 
needs of the people at that office.  Of course, our customers do applications
like that all the time.

>	  ...These people (including most of Corporate Engineering)
>	  still have trouble interfacing with the ALL-IN-1 mail system
>	  used by IS and its captives (including the whole sales force and
>	  most of marketing).

I'm afraid this is simply not the case.  I am on the ADD network and
communicate to and from the production mail network via pretty much all
mail agents that we sell.

>	* It sounds logical to "use what we sell" - until you start to
>	  think about all the other things we sell that ALL-IN-1 doesn't
>	  allow us to use. For instance, there must be several dozen
>	  people (if not several hundred) in the UK trained on ALL-IN-1.
>	  There are about 2 trained on Ada (which takes less time to
>	  learn, but which cannot be used from a captive ALL-IN-1 account).
>	  Yet last quarter in the UK, VAX Ada brought in more revenue to
>	  Digital than did ALL-IN-1. That's just my favourite gripe.
>	  ALL-IN-1 also precludes use of all workstation software whatever,
>	  all UNIX software whatever, all programming languages and CASE
>	  tools, all DECtp products except perhaps RALLY and TEAMDATA,
>	  all real time products, imaging, desktop publishing, CDA, and
>	  almost all of NAS. Oh, and anything to do with VMS, of course.

Totally incorrect.  It may be that the implementation of ALL-IN-1 provided by
DIS at your site do not provide access to ADA, CDA, publising, imaging, etc. 
That does not mean that ALL-IN-1 cannot interface to them, provide access to
applications, allow total user manipulation of them, and in general allow full
use of those tools by the person using ALL-IN-1.  

FWIW, I agree with your later contentions that we must provide access to
the tools and applications which people will be selling.  This only makes
sense and there are lots of ways that we can let people get to that software.
However, the existence or non-existence of ALL-IN-1 is largely irrelevant to
the issue.  It may be an excuse used by system managers.  It may be an excuse
used by finance or IS management.  But blaming ALL-IN-1 is a total cop-out.

What we need to see is a more responsive attitude among the people providing the
hardware/software facilities (IS, DIS, or whatever they are) to the people
who need those systems.  When I was in the field, I had some very frustrating
and some very good experiences when dealing with the DIS folks.  (My impression
was that "DIS management" was an oxymoron.  I hope that was unique to our
facility, but I have a feeling it wasn't so.)

Karl B. on his last day in A1 product management

Re: 1382.8

Karl,

On behalf of Perry (Coleman) and myself, we couldn't have said
it better ourselves!

Cheryl Coleman

    What I use ALL-IN-1 mail for:

	- "official communications", i.e., anything to management or copying
	  management in other organizations

    What I use VAXmail for:

	- "technical communications", i.e., with individual contributors

    Memos which cover both categories usually wind up ALL-IN-1.

    ALL-IN-1 is particularly good at:

	- letting you know mail was delivered (VAXmail is immediate,
	  Nmail lets you know, too)
	- letting you know mail was read
	- letting you respond to either the person who sent you the mail
	  or to everyone who received that person's mail that they sent

    The last one, in particular, is very important.

    And finally, you can't select mail priority for messages going through
    a message router gateway from VAXmail. The last time I sent out a mail
    message that went

	Workstation -> Gateway -> (cc: copy) Workstation

    it took 5 days. The event my mail announced was scheduled 4 days from
    the day I send my mail.


    If I have one problem, it's that document quotas force me to print
    all my ALL-IN-1 mail. It's a necessary evil, otherwise 50% of the U.S.
    would be leased by Digital to house disk farms!

    ALL-IN-1 does the job fine. It's the VOLUME of memos we generate that's
    the problem.

    /Petes

It's interesting.  It seems that when you mention ALL-IN-1 most people
immediately think of mail.  I know that's all I use it for and I only use
it because it takes too long to forward my mail to my workstation.

I also suspect that a lot of bad feelings about ALL-IN-1 are due to the fact
that the corporation won't supply enough computer resources to make it run
efficiently.  The only thing worse than ALL-IN-1 on a DIS machine is DECwindows
on a 6MB VS2000.

Also, the local customizations and applications built on ALL-IN-1 are horrible.

Bob

    
    Tom,
    
    The worse run production systems I've ever seen in my life were those
    run by SWS. I spent 10 years in SWS and have to be the first to admit
    that we never took system management seriously. Specialists were
    assigned to manage the local systems right out of training (if they got
    it at all) and then only spent 6 months on it before going out on a
    residency which started the entire cycle right over. This is assuming a
    single person was assigned the job in the first place - quite often it
    was split between several specialists on a part time basis. Backups and
    security are a joke...
    
    Everyone jumps on DIS about machine resources. Did you ever try to get
    a machine in SWS before workstations were made available in the last
    few years? We try to stay ahead of the curve in CPU/disk/memory
    demands and until this year were pretty sucessful. Things like IEG
    freezes don't help...
    
    The best thing that could happen to both EIS and IS is to merge them.
    I've been saying since I joined DIS 3.5 years ago that we should have a
    small core of I.S. professionals (whatever that really means) and then
    most system managers should be SWS/EIS/whatever employees on 1 - 2 year
    assignments. At the end of that time they could go out to our customers
    who are buying 6500 and 9000s and actually be able to say they can
    identify with the problems of running a large datacenter. Running a 780
    for your SWS district isn't the same! You can build up a level of
    creditability that is impossible otherwise. It would also help the
    average SWS person appreciate what it takes to service 3000 clients -
    something the average SWS and Engineering person has no idea  of yet is
    more than willing to tell us what we do wrong. I know I didn't before
    actually giving it a try!
    
    -Ray
    
    ps I still can't remember to say EIS. It's still SWS to me...
    
    

    i used to have IS people in the group i worked in that would help me
    get my job done.

    now i have IS people outside my group that help when they can, but are
    hindered by policy dictated by their management who think they are a
    service organization but wouldn't know what the word meant if they had
    to.

    rich

    
    
    
    Disclaimer:  absolutely no offense intended to anyone!
    -------------------------------------------------------------------- 
    
    ...typical conversation between me and field person who wants my help:
    
      FP:  So what's your ALL-IN-1 address?
    
      me:  Well, most of us in Spitbrook don't have ALL-IN-1 accounts, but..
    
      FP:  What!  How do you communicate?
    
      me:  Most of the people I need to exchange mail with have VAXmail
    
      FP:  You're kidding!  That's [ wonderful/awful ] !
    
      me:  Well, it's ok with me, I'd rather have the computer resources
           for development, but as I was saying, I think Spitbrook now
       	   has a gateway...
    
      FP:  You folks in central [are still in the dark ages/ are so
           arrogant/ are so lucky],  doing things differently from the rest
    	   of the company.  Have you even SEEN ALL-IN-1?  Our manager said
    	   everyone had to have an ALL-IN-1 account!
    
      me:  Well, yes, as a matter of fact I used to write courses about 
       	   ALL-IN-1 and I think it has its uses.  But our managers decided that
           we could do our work pretty well without it.  And Spitbrook 
    	   has a gateway that occasionally sends ALL-IN-1 mail to us...
    	   try sending it to me @ZKO.
    
      FP:  mumble...one company, one message...network...Spitbrook...
    	   VAXmail...mumble...support...VT100...car phones...mumble
    
      me:  I'll look for your mail, ok?  If you have any trouble, there's
           always the DTN!
    
    

    re: .12
    
    I don't know if sending EIS people to DIS to learn how to run a data
    center is a very good idea.  A few months ago there was a hardware
    problem on our local DIS ALL-IN-1 cluster and we were informed that
    all mail and documents received/created for the past week were gone.
    Apparently, the organization chartered with providing supposedly vital
    computing resources to the corporation hasn't learned about backups
    yet.
    
    In the ACT I'm responsible for, the only way my customers would lose a
    weeks work would be if the whole building was destroyed, as our
    complete backups go off site once a week.
    
    Bob

    
    re: .15
    
    Never said *all* DIS datacenters were a model of efficency. Look at it
    as a chance for EIS to finally show DIS how it should be done!
    
    Backups not going off-site aren't usually the problem. Doing backups of
    already corrupt files seem to be the favoriate. Also, doing backups of
    active ALL-IN-1 files are a common cause of lost data - you have
    to shut it down for backups to be effective and many sites still aren't
    doing that.
    
    Also, depending on which I.S. manager you talk to he may or may not
    include the OA systems as "vital or critical" applications. A mindset
    that MUST change since most Sales Reps would rather lose most of the
    their "business" systems than their OA systems.
    
    re: .14
    
    With a little understanding ALL-IN-1 and VAXmail users can co-exist,
    even without gateways. You can import VAXmail received into ALL-IN-1
    and you can send VAXmail *DIRECTLY* from ALL-IN-1. If you give that FP
    your address and tell them to use it in the TO: field  with an
    underscore ("_") in front of it ALL-IN-1 will send it without touching
    the Message Router. I do this all the time and still have it in my
    ALL-IN-1 folders for future reference.
    
    -Ray
    

As a former Digital I.S. Manager of many years (and now an individual
contributor in Sales Support), I think its ridiculous that our Field ALL-IN-1
accounts are captive. Due to this policy we have more equipment than required,
i.e., we have separate systems for Site I.S. (DIS/IM&T), EIS, ACT, and a
plethora of personal and shared rotational equipment spread throughout the
District. 

If someone did a computing needs analysis for the WHOLE district, I honestly
believe that we could implement a more cost-effective solution to provide the 
necessary computing resources to the Field.

Regards,

Jim

	 re .8:

> ALL-IN-1 is a good office system.

	Agreed. Perhaps not as far out ahead of the competition as it was,
	but still a leading product, and one which gave us all an object
	lesson in the fact that getting to market on time is worth any amount
	of gold plating (or even ordinary quality).

> It is certainly true that we sell lots of it (more revenue than any
> software except VMS & DECnet)

	This is received wisdom, and I have been told it many times over
	the last few years. Reluctant as I am to mix it with someone from
	product management, I believe that in the UK at least, several
	other product sets including CASE and TP brought in more software
	revenue. ALL-IN-1 is probably right up there as a single product,
	but it isn't really fair to compare it with any other single product
	(if you doubt this, check out the size of the ALL-IN-1 kit).

	ALL-IN-1 certainly levers a lot of hardware - this is because, as
	I explained, it requires 5 times as much hardware as VMS for the same
	number of users. This is good for us for a certain time. When
	something comparable comes along that needs a lot less hardware,
	who knows, it might become bad for us? ALL-IN-1 also brings in a lot
	of service revenue, but if we had as many people trained to
	deliver CASE services as there are trained on ALL-IN-1, that could
	be quite profitable too. Unfortunately, we don't.

> a lot of times it is sold to people who do not know or want to know
> anything about computers. .6 is correct in suggesting that it is unusual
> for DEC to sell anything like that, but its success should perhaps
> indicate maybe we try to do more of it.

	That's not quite what I said. For the record, I am not in the
	least surprised that Digital sells a lot to people who aren't
	interested in the internals and intricacies of computers. Of course
	we do. Most customers are like that, and I'm all for it.

	What I said was that I hope Digital's own employees do not fit
	the description of "people who do not know or want to know anything
	about computers". Whatever progressive business experts may tell
	us, I believe that every salesman, specialist, engineer, consultant,
	secretary, marketeer, manager and floor-cleaner who works for
	Digital should know something about what we sell, and what's more
	should be enthusiastic about it.

> I'm sure Tom is right that we spent $500 million on "vast VAXclusters" but
> I don't think it was motivated by the change to A1.  When I joined the company
> in 1984, we didn't have much in the way of computing in field offices.  The
> investment in field computing was something whose time had come.  I think it
> is unfair and inappropriate to say that the need was predicated on the ALL-IN-1
> rollout.  Those computers were needed because there WEREN'T ANY.

	Here in the UK, ALL-IN-1 and IS followed the large-scale availability
	of computers. The view at board level seemed to be "this is a huge
	investment, let's have a special department of professionals to make
	sure it isn't wasted". To my way of thinking, this demeaned our
	existing expertise. It identified what managers like to call an
	"overhead", i.e. something that is essential but not in an immediately
	obvious way. 

> Saying that ALL-IN-1 needs 5 times as much hardware as VMS is like saying
> that a banana isn't very good when used as a hammer.  If the tool that you
> need is VMS, then you should have the access to VMS that you need.  There are
> plenty of people in this company (I mean LOTS) for whom ALL-IN-1 is a useful
> tool upon which they rely to get their work done.  For them, the amount of
> VMS resources consumed is irrelevant.  They just want to get their job done.

	No, it's like saying that ALL-IN-1 needs 5 times as much hardware
	as VMS. My source, by the way, is an article written by the
	corporate product manager for ALL-IN-1 and published in Sales
	Update back in 1986. The article strongly advised sales people
	*never* to sell an ALL-IN-1 system underconfigured with hardware,
	as the long-term result would be a dissatisfied customer. Applying
	the rules given in the Sales Update to my own office system, I
	found we had an 11/785 with 12 megabytes, when we needed at least
	2 8500s with 64 megabytes each. But the budget wouldn't run to
	that.

	This is like buying a Space Shuttle and saying "we can't afford the
	proper fuel, we'll run it on ordinary gasoline". Results will be poor.

> Giving them the "more efficient" VMS would be pointless, as they wouldn't
> get anything done in the user unfriendly "$" environment.

	Now this is the crux of my observations. Who the hell says "they"
	won't get anything done? In my experience, it's the ALL-IN-1
	environment that's "user unfriendly".

	First of all, it stops me doing many things I need to do, because
	the whole "captive menu system" philosophy assumes that the wise
	system providers know at the outset all the things I might want to
	do.

	Secondly, it's extremely cryptic and unclear. Oh sure, if you take the
	training, it's all laid out for you. But with that amount of training,
	VMS would be fairly straightforward too.

	Lastly, people don't want something that's set up for them by
	benevolent authority - like a play-pen - especially when it runs
	like a pig. Users normally prefer speed and freedom to any degree
	of features. That's one reason why so many of them like UNIX(tm)
	better than VMS. The fact stands - ALL-IN-1 systems too often run
	like a pig - and that's because Digital cannot afford such an
	expensive system, and we are running it underconfigured - across
	the company as a whole (I am sure there are showcases where everything
	goes smoothly).

> It's been our experience that none of the local office ALL-IN-1's
> provide site-specific capabilities (like order tracking) tailored to the 
> needs of the people at that office.  Of course, our customers do applications
> like that all the time.

	I wonder why we don't have any of these "job-specific" customized
	capabilities which are such a major feature of ALL-IN-1 and which
	customers appreciate so much? I only ask because I want to know.

> I'm afraid this is simply not the case.  I am on the ADD network and
> communicate to and from the production mail network via pretty much all
> mail agents that we sell.

	Certainly, there
	are gateways, and they work pretty well most of the time. But
	business mail needs to be 100% reliable - and punctual. The
	cooperation of VMS Mail with ALL-IN-1 mail is jury-rigged and
	doesn't work very well, or always. To take just one example,
	look at what happens when a message router goes away. All VMS
	Mail sent to it just falls on the floor. Even NMAIL doesn't try
	resending - it gives up. Of course, from VMS Mail, many of the
	features of ALL-IN-1 Mail are not available. So when I get a
	message sent to 999 people, I can only reply to the sender.

	Incidentally, on two occasions now I have missed customer meetings
	because an ALL-IN-1 mail message took more than 12 hours to travel
	less than 40 miles. I could actually walk that fast.

> Totally incorrect.  It may be that the implementation of ALL-IN-1 provided by
> DIS at your site do not provide access to ADA, CDA, publising, imaging, etc. 
> That does not mean that ALL-IN-1 cannot interface to them, provide access to
> applications, allow total user manipulation of them, and in general allow full
> use of those tools by the person using ALL-IN-1.  

	I can access Ada and other software tools, only if I am granted
	DCL access. As the base note pointed out, this is not generally
	granted. Besides, what is the point of running ALL-IN-1 if its
	only contribution is going to be to add about two minutes to
	my login time, meanwhile chalking up several thousand direct 
	i/o operations and pagefaults, and then take up about a megabyte of
	disk space while I do my real work in a spawned subprocess?

	How do I get the benefits of CDA from a character cell terminal
	which can't display DDIF or PostScript? How do I use publishing
	or imaging tools from a cc terminal?

> What we need to see is a more responsive attitude among the people providing the
> hardware/software facilities (IS, DIS, or whatever they are) to the people
> who need those systems.

	Agreed. One of my main points, however, was that the whole idea
	of handing over Digital's computing facilities (aka lifeblood)
	to a hierarchy of managers whose measurements do not reflect the
	success of the business, was calculated to lead to a *less*
	responsive attitude.

	/Tom

One long reply deserves another, I suppose.

>> It is certainly true that we sell lots of it (more revenue than any
>> software except VMS & DECnet)

>	This is received wisdom, and I have been told it many times over
>	the last few years. Reluctant as I am to mix it with someone from
>	product management, I believe that in the UK at least, several
>	other product sets including CASE and TP brought in more software
>	revenue. ALL-IN-1 is probably right up there as a single product,
>	but it isn't really fair to compare it with any other single product
>	(if you doubt this, check out the size of the ALL-IN-1 kit).

World-wide, Tom.  The ALL-IN-1 kit most assuredly consists of many products.
We sell an awful lot of Message Router, Notes, FMS, etc, courtesy of that
ALL-IN-1 kit.  Comparing "product sets" would include other things that are
not components of an ALL-IN-1 sale per se.  These are things like 1-2-3/VMS,
DECwrite, etc.  I am talking about ALL-IN-1 only.  (Yes, ALL-IN-1 component
products get credited for revenue from sales from within the A1 kit.  An A1
sale benefits many products.)

>	ALL-IN-1 certainly levers a lot of hardware - this is because, as
>	I explained, it requires 5 times as much hardware as VMS for the same
>	number of users. This is good for us for a certain time. When
>	something comparable comes along that needs a lot less hardware,
>	who knows, it might become bad for us? ALL-IN-1 also brings in a lot
>	of service revenue, but if we had as many people trained to
>	deliver CASE services as there are trained on ALL-IN-1, that could
>	be quite profitable too. Unfortunately, we don't.

I'll take what works now.  It might become bad for us, but it isn't and it
hasn't in 8 years.  (10 years if you count the time it was sold as a SWS
service.)  Getting people trained on CASE is irrelevant to the ALL-IN-1 service
revenue.  The A1 service delivery people are ALWAYS BUSY.  There is no lag
in CASE service revenue because of extraneous A1 bodies sitting around.

>	That's not quite what I said. For the record, I am not in the
>	least surprised that Digital sells a lot to people who aren't
>	interested in the internals and intricacies of computers. Of course
>	we do. Most customers are like that, and I'm all for it.

Sorry. That's what I thought my eyes saw.

>	What I said was that I hope Digital's own employees do not fit
>	the description of "people who do not know or want to know anything
>	about computers". Whatever progressive business experts may tell
>	us, I believe that every salesman, specialist, engineer, consultant,
>	secretary, marketeer, manager and floor-cleaner who works for
>	Digital should know something about what we sell, and what's more
>	should be enthusiastic about it.

I couldn't agree more.  It is very disheartening to see the level of ignorance
about the most basic of our products among our non-technical colleagues.

>> Giving them the "more efficient" VMS would be pointless, as they wouldn't
>> get anything done in the user unfriendly "$" environment.
>
>	Now this is the crux of my observations. Who the hell says "they"
>	won't get anything done? In my experience, it's the ALL-IN-1
>	environment that's "user unfriendly".

There are lot of people out there who cannot "$" their way out of a paper
bag, Tom!  You're missing my point.  I AGREE that people who need VMS should
have access to it.  But there are a lot of people in DEC who find A1 to be
most beneficial as an interface between themselves and their computers.
These people need and want A1.  Other people, like me, prefer to use BOTH
environments as they have the skills and the tasks which make both VMS and
A1 appropriate to what they do.  And some people don't need A1 at all.  They
certainly shouldn't be forced to use it if they don't have any reason to.

>	First of all, it stops me doing many things I need to do, because
>	the whole "captive menu system" philosophy assumes that the wise
>	system providers know at the outset all the things I might want to
>	do.

Don't use it.  You are not the target audience for this product.  There are
still 4 million CUSTOMERS who think this an appropriate way of approaching
their computing needs.

>	Secondly, it's extremely cryptic and unclear. Oh sure, if you take the
>	training, it's all laid out for you. But with that amount of training,
>	VMS would be fairly straightforward too.

I don't think so, Tom.  We have secretaries and managers and other
folks who have no computer background trained and doing useful work in
4 hours.  I doubt I could have even the remotest chance of doing that
in the $ environment.  Of course, if you've already got your computer
science degree, that's another story.  A PDP-11 background doesn't hurt,
either.  :^)

Those people who feel that the interface is "cryptic and unclear" change
the interface!  I've seen ALL-IN-1 implementations where the customer chose
not to use any of the screens as we provide them out of the box.  That is
as it should be - the strength of A1 is in making it appropriate to the
environment where it lives.

>	Lastly, people don't want something that's set up for them by
>	benevolent authority - like a play-pen - especially when it runs
>	like a pig. Users normally prefer speed and freedom to any degree
>	of features. That's one reason why so many of them like UNIX(tm)
>	better than VMS. 

Ooops, Tom!  You're WAY out of touch on this one.  OUR WHOLE CUSTOMER BASE
CONSISTS OF SITES WHICH DISAGREE (with their checkbooks) WITH YOU ON THE ABOVE
CONTENTION.  

Remember, somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of all VMS users have an ALL-IN-1
account.  The techies like UNIX.  More power to them.  As UNIX becomes mandated
and popular in our commercial accounts (will it?) I suppose that the
non-technical people will expect software analogues to A1 in that environment
as well.

>       The fact stands - ALL-IN-1 systems too often run
>	like a pig - and that's because Digital cannot afford such an
>	expensive system, and we are running it underconfigured - across
>	the company as a whole (I am sure there are showcases where everything
>	goes smoothly).

Cf, RBW::(Ray)Wickert.  We've got a lot of things to do yet before that
assertion can be stated with accuracy.  Maybe it's your experience.  It's
not mine.  There are certainly some big clusters.  They can run well.  And
there are some not-so-big systems that should-be-big.  In any case, the local
implementation decisions have a LOT to say about the happiness of the user
population.

>	I wonder why we don't have any of these "job-specific" customized
>	capabilities which are such a major feature of ALL-IN-1 and which
>	customers appreciate so much? I only ask because I want to know.

Because DIS doesn't have one or more of the following:  the talent, the 
training, the time, the desire to support things locally, the trust in EIS to
allow EIS to make the changes, the charter or metrics to really make their
users HAPPY.

Yes, it's a hot button.  And yes it's a major feature of A1 that customers
appreciate so much. 

>	Certainly, there
>>	are gateways, and they work pretty well most of the time. But
>	business mail needs to be 100% reliable - and punctual. The
>	cooperation of VMS Mail with ALL-IN-1 mail is jury-rigged and
>	doesn't work very well, or always. To take just one example,
>	look at what happens when a message router goes away. All VMS
>	Mail sent to it just falls on the floor. Even NMAIL doesn't try
>	resending - it gives up. Of course, from VMS Mail, many of the
>	features of ALL-IN-1 Mail are not available. So when I get a
>	message sent to 999 people, I can only reply to the sender.

When a message router goes away, your user agent is responsible for storing
and retrying.  Blaming this on A1 (which is not in the picture) is silly and
blaming it on message router is inaccurate.

It's like handing your mail to Joe Bloggs and asking him to post it for you.
Then when he brings it back and says, "I didn't do it" you're blaming the
postal service.  Sorry.  Get someone more reliable.

There are many other advantages of store-and-forward systems and full function
user agents.  You may or may not need those advantages.  For many people in
DEC, VMSmail is a appropriate utility.

>	I can access Ada and other software tools, only if I am granted
>	DCL access. As the base note pointed out, this is not generally
>	granted. Besides, what is the point of running ALL-IN-1 if its
>	only contribution is going to be to add about two minutes to
>	my login time, meanwhile chalking up several thousand direct 
>	i/o operations and pagefaults, and then take up about a megabyte of
>	disk space while I do my real work in a spawned subprocess?

You need DCL access.  If it is not attainable on the A1 system, you need to
change the A1 management or change systems.  There is no point in YOUR running
ALL-IN-1.  The point of A1 is for the other people who do need it.  The 
implementation about which you are flaming is bad.  ALL-IN-1 is not really
the issue.  People are the issue.

>	How do I get the benefits of CDA from a character cell terminal
>	which can't display DDIF or PostScript? How do I use publishing
>	or imaging tools from a cc terminal?

The benefits of CDA?  Use imaging & publishing tools?  Surely your point is
that a workstation is appropriate for the work you do.  I would be last to
disagree. Your being locked into ALL-IN-1 in the cc world has nothing to do
with your need for a workstation.  I hope!   

FWIW, A1 does know how to display the text of DDIF documents on cc terminals.
And if you are running on an X-term or workstation, A1 can allow you to make,
edit, display, and store DDIF and PS from within ALL-IN-1.

>	One of my main points, however, was that the whole idea
>	of handing over Digital's computing facilities (aka lifeblood)
>	to a hierarchy of managers whose measurements do not reflect the
>	success of the business, was calculated to lead to a *less*
>	responsive attitude.

And it has.  Must have been a successful decision, eh?  :^(

K.

Re .19:

>There are still 4 million CUSTOMERS who think [A1 is] an appropriate way of
			   ^^^^^^^^^
>approaching their computing needs.
...
>Those people who feel that the interface is "cryptic and unclear" change
>the interface!  I've seen ALL-IN-1 implementations where the customer chose
							      ^^^^^^^^
>not to use any of the screens as we provide them out of the box.  ...

Either:

1.  We have over 4000000 A1 accounts.
	-or-
2.  Internal Digital users aren't prevented from accessing basic applications on
    their A1 systems by system management fiat - they merely don't know how to
    customize A1 to give them access to DCL, etc.
	-or-
3.  Your definition of the word "customer" is inconsistant.
				/AHM

    Not inconsistant, just context-sensitive ;^).
    
    What we have is over 4 million customer desktops (end users) of the
    ALL-IN-1 Integrated Office System.  This is the actual design center
    for the product.  It is an end-user system.
    
    In the larger sense, many of our customers (IS departments, whatever)
    have tailored the software to fit their end-users' business needs. This
    may entail writing entirely new systems or giving the user a PC
    "look-and-feel" user interface.
    
    All depends on the granularity of your view.
    
    Funny how discussions of this product rapidly approach the level of a
    religious debate.
    
    
    David

I hope .21 helps. 

I probably should have been clearer in my note.  We have 4M people using 
ALL-IN-1 at customer sites.

Customer sites frequently choose to modify A1.  The work is usually done
by programmers.  Note that most programmers who do change ALL-IN-1 are
avid fans of the product.  From my experience, that seems to be because
they can get applications written very quickly with A1.

K.

	ALL-IN-1 has probably been around as long as I have been
    at DEC as I recall we simulated miniature ALL-IN-1 menus for the 
    "Sloane-Wentworth Sale" salesperson's desk scene of the IVIS course
    I programmed back in 1984-85 for Sales Training.

	What gets me is that in all of this time,  I've never even had
    the [opportunity?] to use ALL-IN-1 as it has never been available on
    any of the time-sharing systems I've ever had accounts on (and I'm not
    about to dedicate my workstation to ALL-IN-1).  It's sad, but I have
    an easier time sending electronic mail across the Internet to my wife
    and family than I do sending mail to anyone @FOO.

	Since I have no real ALL-IN-1 experience, I can't participate in
    the ALL-IN-1 bashing, but if it is truely a resource hog, then why is
    it that after all this time nobody has seen fit to re-engineer the
    product so that it could be optimized for better performance?

				  -davo

    re: .15

    >center is a very good idea.  A few months ago there was a hardware
    >problem on our local DIS ALL-IN-1 cluster and we were informed that
    >all mail and documents received/created for the past week were gone.

    Bob,

    The problem isn't backups per se.  ALL-IN-1 doesn't really have a good
    mechanism for incrementally restoring an account or system to a
    particular point in time.  I've had a specific document 'lost' and when
    I've tried to get IM&T (DIS) to restore it, they couldn't, even though
    they knew it was on a backup tape.  BACKUP works fine for VMS, but for
    ALL-IN-1 you need something that understands the file cabinet DOCDB.  I
    am not convinced that this particular shortcoming has been addressed --
    certainly, integrity of data in ALL-IN-1 doesn't rival a database, even
    though it certainly has equally valuable information to the
    corporation.

    Ducking,
    Steve

    
    If You "lost" a document, it IS possible to get it back.  The degree of
    corruption and time between backups may limit the amount of information
    retrieved.  For example if you recieve a mail a 10am and the disk is
    wiped out at 11am then you've lost the mail.  Exactly the same as if
    you'd recieved it in VAXmail.
    
    If you recieve a document 10am one day the disks are incrementally
    backed up that night, and then lost the next day, you can still get all
    the information back....
    
    The easiest part to get back is the text of a document/mail message, it
    may take a bit more work to get all the attributres of a mail message
    back, but it can be done.
    
    BTW I'm in ALL-IN-1 support so I do no what I'm talking about.
    
    Re Tom(?) It appears you don't need ALL-IN-1 to do your job, so you
    shouldn't be using it.  Don't blame ALL-IN-1 for your management
    problems, your problem is ONLY your managment, if they won't give you
    the tools you need to do your job.
    
    As for your problems with a mail taking 12 hours to cover 40 miles 
    how would that change using Nmail or VMS mail if the Sending/recieving 
    nodes where down?  At least with ALL-IN-1 the sender could put 
    delivery/read reciepts on the mail and have let you know that the mail 
    hadn't arrived, the sender chose not to do this.  ALL-IN-1 provides the
    functionality if people don't use it that is not the products fault.
    
    Cheers,
    Andy

ALL-IN-1 & PostScript Printing	REGENT::A1_PRINT_COMPAT_KIT		    2740
ALL-IN-1 Applic Prog Wishes	IOSG::ALLIN1_APR_WISH			     801
ALL-IN-1 CM Clearing House	POMPEO::CMHOUSE				    2695
ALL-IN-1 Shared File Cab.	OAXTRA::A1SFCP				    1560
ALL-IN-1 Sys for Business Oper. SHALOT::SBO				     420
ALL-IN-1 Sys for Customer Serv	SHALOT::SCS				    1946
ALL-IN-1 Sys for Sales & Mkting SHALOT::SSM				     400
ALL-IN-1 System for Exec. Serv. OAXTRA::A1SES				    1561
ALL-IN-1 Technical Doc.		IOSG::ALL-IN-1_DOCUMENTATION		    2338
ALL-IN-1 Tools			UKCSSE::A1TOOLS				    2878
ALL-IN-1 V2.4 Support		OAWEGO::ALL-IN-1			     365
ALL-IN-1 V2.n Wishlist		IOSG::ALLIN1_WISH			     800
ALL-IN-1 in DECwindows (Mica)	SHALOT::MICA				    2469
PC/ALL-IN-1  Europe		PAMPAM::PCA1_EU				     697
VAXtel/ALL-IN-1 (U.K.)		MAJORS::VAXTEL				    1146
Voice Messaging (ALL-IN-1)	SILK::VOICEMESSAGING			    1597
ALL-IN-1 V2 Support		OAXTRA::ALLIN1_V2			     365
ALL-IN-1 V2.3 Support		OAWEGO::ALL-IN-1_V23			     365
ALLIN1_V2, Volume 1		OAXTRA::ALLIN1_V2_OLD			     365
DECmail to ALL-IN-1 Migration	ASABET::TECH_MIG			    1612
Old ALL-IN-1 V2 Support		OAXTRA::OLD_ALLIN1_V2			     366

RE: .-1

You are right that the more specific product-related issues can be taken
to other conferences.

Most of this discussion seems relevant to this note stream, though.

K.

    
    Actually most (if not all) of those conferences are not suitable places
    for continuing any part of the contents of the notes so far.  I think
    this is probably one of the more valid conferences.  The problem
    discussed is one of perception and use, not of a fault in the product.
    
    
    Cheers,
    Andy

re Note 1382.23 by BIGJOE::DMCLURE:

> 	Since I have no real ALL-IN-1 experience, I can't participate in
>     the ALL-IN-1 bashing, but if it is truely a resource hog, then why is
>     it that after all this time nobody has seen fit to re-engineer the
>     product so that it could be optimized for better performance?
  
        Probably because it's been so successful in its current form.

        We are, in fact, in the midst of major re-implementation of
        ALL-IN-1 to divide it into user interface clients and
        sharable and distributable services.  This work has
        proceeded in fits and starts for most of the past 4 years or
        so.  It is so extensive that what will result will in fact be
        a new system -- one hopes it will have lots of compatibility
        with the old, while doing every new thing demanded by today's
        market!

        Bob

    I love the product. I have implemented a numer of custom solutions that
    I, and members of my group, have used consistently for a long time. The
    applications include taking phone messages via screens that become mail
    messages to the recipient, monthly reporting, an "electronic roladex",
    an automated JV process, and others.
    
    The ability to spend a few hours at a terminal and impact the
    productivity of a number of people for an entire fiscal year more than
    makes up for the "resource hog" bashing that the product takes, IMHO.
    
    The problem I've seen with the product is that it is installed as a
    layered product and .... well, that's it. In its off-the-shelf format
    it is a good product. If one takes the time to understand what it can
    do when customized, it takes on a whole new life. Very few groups
    within the company use it that way ... unfortunately.
    
    /se
    
    

    
    BTW, I'm more than willing to admit there is a significant management
    problem with DIS in this company, at least in the U.S.
    
    One of the problems is that IM&T doesn't work for any of our customers,
    not "really" at least. The only place the reporting structure comes
    together is U.S. Country. Now, we all know that's a major reason Sales
    Support moved over into Sales, right? You can't get good service unless
    you have direct control or, or impact over, the service organization. A
    manager of US IM&T was just named and he sits on Zerekski's (sp) staff
    which may help in the long run but it's still a pain in the field. 
    
    Another problem is that even though a client of IM&T were to show up at
    our door with a sackfull of money we wouldn't be able to do anything
    more for him. We can't purchase equipment without Country or Corporate
    controlling it - we can't hire without Country and so on. It'd be great
    if IM&T could over a system management service for all those
    workstations sitting on secretarys desk and it would make GREAT sense
    for the entire corporation but it's almost impossible to do it. You
    could go around asking for .25 of a body here and .25 there but that
    won't work. Very frustrating to see something that would help everyone
    and not be able to do it because of the accounting systems in use...
    
    -Ray
    
    
    
    

    re: .31---``Very frustrating to see something that would help everyone
    and not be able to do it because of the accounting systems in use...''
    
    It happens all the time.  Here's a story I was told at the lunch table
    recently.  One of our larger software products was still supporting
    RX50s as a distribution medium.  This was a major source of pain
    because of the large number of floppies required for this product and
    that led to unreliability, since the chances of a bad spot on one of
    the 25 or so floppies was pretty high.
    
    The engineering manager learned that there were only four customers
    still using RX50s, but he couldn't convince the person who controls
    such things to give the customers better equipment so he could drop
    RX50 support, even though the savings to the company would have been
    significant, because the groups who would benefit can't give away
    equipment, and the groups who can give away equipment wouldn't see
    any any of the benefits.
    
    He got his way by threatening to purchase the equipment using his own
    capital equipment budget, and send it to the cusomers.  His threat
    was credible because of the small number of customers involved, and
    so the right thing happened.  (He didn't actually have to do this.)
    
    Sorry to be vague but I don't have the permission of the person who
    told me the story to use his name.  Take this as just an anecdote,
    to illustrate the kinds of things that happen.  To solve this kind
    of problem you need something like a product line manager with the
    authority to move money between equipment and service budgets when
    that makes overall financial sense.  I'd like such a person to have
    even more authority---to decide, for example, between purchasing
    something or hiring someone.
        John Sauter
                                      

	re .0:

	Oh, by the way, I forgot to answer the base note. IMHO, if
	your system manager does not give you "$ privilege" from
	ALL-IN-1, he or she does not intend you to use VMS. This is
	usually the case. That means that (in the UK at least) it is
	quite conceivable that getting to the $ could be a criminal
	offence.

	However, even that doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't do it.
	Because both this company and the law of computing are seriously
	confused. The people who passed that law appear to believe that you
	can "break in" to a computer in something other than a figurative
	sense. They may have watched "Tron", and they certainly wouldn't 
	recognize a metaphor if it bit them. A lot of the people who run
	this company do themselves run on little iron rails, holding a
	book of rules up to their faces so that they can't see the real world.
	The "right" approach is to ask your manager to ask the system manager to
	give you DCL access. But in some facilities this has to go through
	a committee which only meets every month (honest!) and you have
	to "justify" your need to people who

		(a) Don't understand or care about what you are trying to
		    do.
		(b) Are measured on security, which they think will decrease
		    about 98% with people jumping around doing COPY commands
		    and having direct access to printer queues, etc.

	So don't hold your breath, and be prepared to get very unpopular
	very quickly.

	On a percentage basis, then, it may pay off better to just "Do It".
	The base note remains a very pointed question which goes to the
	heart of much of our ineffectiveness as a corporation.

	Which brings me to .32:

	This reminded me of the time a couple of years ago when UK
	CASE Marketing discovered the National Computer Centre. This
	business publishes a Guide to software tools, and demos tools
	from anyone who cares to lodge them in the Centre. It took over
	a year to get a VAXstation and some software in there, for exactly
	the same reason as given in .32 - those who stood to benefit
	couldn't do it, and those who could do it didn't stand to benefit.

	This, I hope, is where Entrepreneurs come in.

	/Tom

    If you believe that you having access to DCL is the right thing for the
    company then do it. Here's why I say this. Follow these two scenarios:
    
    	1, You ask permission for access to DCL
    
    		You spend a lot of effort convincing productivity
                prevention people/committees of your need. Eventually
    		you win.
    
    	2, You just do it
    
    		Eventually a bureaucrat finds out what you've done. He
    		exerts a lot of effort in trying to get DCL taken away from
    	        you or you reprimanded. Eventually you win because you
    		are clearly doing THE RIGHT THING.
    
    The outcome of the 2 scenarios is identical. But in scenario 1 your
    timer is wasted. In scenario 2 an unproductive bureaucrats time is
    wasted. Hence the way to go is clear.
    
    Dave

    RE: .34
    
    My sentiments, exactly! Well put. If a committe has nothing better to
    do than decide if someone can have access to DCL or not, we're in REAL
    trouble!
    
    /se
    

>	Oh, by the way, I forgot to answer the base note. IMHO, if
>	your system manager does not give you "$ privilege" from
>	ALL-IN-1, he or she does not intend you to use VMS. This is
>	usually the case. That means that (in the UK at least) it is
>	quite conceivable that getting to the $ could be a criminal
>	offence.

	Operations follow the policies of the Board of Management, they also 
	have to follow corporate and local audit requirements. It is not the 
	system managers decision to give you $ access or not, they follow the 
	policies and decisions for that country.

>	The "right" approach is to ask your manager to ask the system manager to
>	give you DCL access. But in some facilities this has to go through
>	a committee which only meets every month (honest!) and you have
>	to "justify" your need to people who
>
>		(a) Don't understand or care about what you are trying to
>		    do.
>		(b) Are measured on security, which they think will decrease
>		    about 98% with people jumping around doing COPY commands
>		    and having direct access to printer queues, etc.

	If you want to improve the situation, tackle the decision makers,
	not the messenger.

	Heather