Conference 7.286::digital

    Does the strategy briefing seem to now put us more on a software and
    consulting track  and greatly reduce emphasis on the ole 'Alpha
    Generation'... ?
    

    There is a bunch of new stuff in VTX IR.
    
    One set, readable on a terminal, is accessed by
    
    	VTX IR
    	2 (New/revised)
    	SS (Software Strategy)
    
    I thought the 'Connectivity Software Strategy' was _very_ interesting.
    
    	Dave

    The white papers (except the System Integration Software Strategy
    which is exactly the one I needed :-( ) were accessible via the
    Flash on the home page. I had downloaded a couple.
    
    This morning 9 am CET the Flash references no longer resolve (page
    not found). As of two minutes ago same story. Anyone know whats going
    on?
    
    I know our software strategy is somewhat volatile but surely not 
    quite _this_ volatile...
    
    re roelof

 > Does the strategy briefing seem to now put us more on a software and
 >   consulting track  and greatly reduce emphasis on the ole 'Alpha
 >   Generation'... ?
    
	Of course not, it was a Software Strategy Briefing ( although that 	
        wasn't obvious at all. )

	Chris 

I thought the most significant fact was that software was to be its own 
profit/loss center.

I applaud this.  I think this will make all the difference to the approach
of developing software in this company.  For too long the software development
groups have been "directed" to build certain products, to not build certain
other products, and to put their products on certain platforms, and to not
put their products on certain other platforms, in order to support the sales
of Digital hardware.  All well and good from a vendor who is focused on 
selling VAX and Alpha boxes, but it means that we missed a lot of revenue
that we could have had if our products were available on other platforms.

Having software be its own profit/loss center means that the business people
are now free(er) to make decisions like putting the best FORTRAN compiler on
the planet today on competitors boxes, such that it can make money on its
own rather than being a layered product on a systems sale.  It means that 
we can start getting some of our software products into the installed bases
of our competitors, whose customers are happy with the competitor, but would
also like some of the top-notch software tools developed by Digital.

The only slightly odd thing about this is the sale of Rdb to Oracle.  What
is the first thing that Oracle did with Rdb?  Announce that they would be
putting it on other platforms!  This is the kind of freedom that our 
software groups have now that they have not had in the past.

The argument can (and has) been made that this is encouraging the sale of
competitors boxes, and hurting our own box sales.  But I would prefer to
think of it as having access to markets where we are currently not even a
player, but for which we could get some incremental revenue.  Let's face
it, there are customers who are Sun/SGI/IBM/HP bigots who will *NEVER*
change to Digital.  But if we could sell them some software on their current
platform, we would at least be making *some* money from them...

-- Ken Moreau

P.S. I don't know of any substantive plans to do any of this, and I am making
     up these examples, but they are the kind of things we *could* do now
     that we couldn't do before.

    Or to put it differently does anyone know what the ftp location
    is for the white papers, I didn't record it yesterday while downloading
    through the Web.
    
    re roelof

Well - with everyone here (almost) on the "home alone" program, I think the 
only folks who saw this DVN were administrative folks.... so, I don't think 
anyone knows what this "new strategy" is..... the bigger question seems to 
be: how long will this one last ?

    Two inches in the Wall Street Journal on page B-14.

    The Flash references are now once again working so you can get to
    the white papers and presentaions.
    
    To answer my own question the whitepapers are located at:
    
    ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/info/whitepaper
    and the 3 presentations at
    ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/info/presentation
    
    Roelof's single sentence strategy summary statement:
    
    Software takes a 3 way split: connectivity products into a straight
    no strings attached profit & loss software business model, si enabling
    software is allowed to claim some si dollars and platform enabling
    software is allowed to claim some platform dollars. SI and platform
    software dance to the tune played by the SI and platform bosses.
    
    re roelof

    The whitepapers and slides are also available via VTX IR, 
    but are not readable on lowly text terminals.
    
    	VTX IR
    	3 (by keyword)
    	* (all categories)
    	"Digital Corporate Strategy"
    
    will return 18 items; all but the "LIxxxx" doc id's are plain text.
    
    The LIxxxx's are the white papers and slides, which you can have VTX
    mail to you (as PS or PPT) if you can't get them from any other source.
    
    Dave

    I've converted 6 of the whitepapers to PDF (simply because I don't
    have a Postscript browser!).
    
    They are the whitepapers:
    li01f5p8.pdf
    li01f6p8.pdf
    li01f7p8.pdf
    li01f8p8.pdf
    li01f9p8.pdf
    li01fap8.pdf
    
    I don't remember which is which (perhaps somebody can map the numbers
    to the whitepaper titles) but it includes the Systems Integration
    Software Strategy, the Connectivity Software Strategy, the 3 OS
    Software Strategies and the Platforms Software Strategy.
    
    You can pick up the files at:
    http://www.apd.dec.com/lnx/pdf/li01fxp8.pdf   (x=5,6,7,8,9,a)
    
    Hopefully the guys & gals over at corporate will pull these pdf
    files also..
    
    re roelof
                                                               

    NEW YORK, Sept 1 (Reuter) - Digital Equipment Corp said it is holding an
analysts' briefing in New York next Wednesday morning and key speakers will
be Digital chief executive Robert Palmer and chief financial officer Vincent
Mularkey. 

    John Jones, a Salomon Brothers analyst, said that he was reiterating a
buy rating on Digital, and that he expects the stock to strengthen in
anticipation of the meeting. Jones has a 12 month price target of $55 for
Digital. 

    "Management sounds confident about the turnaround and the prospects for
growth," Jones said in a report to clients. 

Digital shares added 5/8 to 42-3/8.
    Jones said he expects the formal part of the analysts' meeting to be
"pretty generic" -- to address Digital's accomplishments and return to
profitability over the past year and to focus on the Alpha-based computer
business, PCs, networking and consulting business. 

    Jones also said Digital may be close to a partial or full sale of its
semiconductor facility, called Fab 6, in Hudson, Mass. "A deal here could add
$150 million to income," Jones said. "I think they are close. I would expect
them to talk pretty bullishly about concluding a deal soon," Jones said. 

Rtr 14:39 09-01-95
    A Digital spokesman later said that the company has been looking for a
semiconductor partner for the last six months, but that it does not plan any
announcements at its semi-annual analyst meeting. 

    "We have said we feel we will have a partner by the end of the calendar
year," the spokesman said. 

Rtr 15:17 09-01-95




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    RE: .5
    
    Ken, Unfortunately, the Fortran team (or any other software group)
    still gets its money from the rest of the corporation.  If the
    GEM/Fortran team wanted to put DEC Fortran on a HP, Sun, or Apple
    machine, I would think it would be a cold day in hell before we got
    funding from the rest of Digital for this venture.  I would have to
    think we'd have to "borrow" the money to do it or dip into Fortran's
    own profits to fund the effort.  I doubt we could "borrow" the money
    from the rest of the company nor do I think we'd ever get to "keep" the
    profit...  So I think that measuring software on profit/loss is a
    misleading measure unless you let the software groups actually
    determine their own spending level (which they can't).
    
    				-John

Did the same reaction crop up at all DVN viewing sites when
"Buz" said to Bill Strecker, "I've known you for quite a long
time and I don't think I've ever seen you quite this excited."

???

>Did the same reaction crop up at all DVN viewing sites when
>"Buz" said to Bill Strecker, "I've known you for quite a long
>time and I don't think I've ever seen you quite this excited."

    occured at both showings in PK03 cafe

    Okay, I'll bite: what was the reaction?

RE: .14

>    Ken, Unfortunately, the Fortran team (or any other software group)
>    still gets its money from the rest of the corporation.
>[some text deleted]
>          So I think that measuring software on profit/loss is a
>    misleading measure unless you let the software groups actually
>    determine their own spending level (which they can't).

But I certainly got the impression that this is precisely what is changing.
That in fact the Product Managers would be able to take some of the money
and build the products they want to build, and then reap the benefits (or
penalties) of that effort.

Are you saying that my impression is wrong?   Bummer.  Because if you are
correct (and you are certainly much closer to Software Engineering and
Software Product Management than I am), then I don't understand what the
significance or effects of this announcement are at all.  Without the
authority to make those kinds of decisions, what does it mean to be a
profit/loss center?  Very little, IMHO.

-- Ken Moreau

    8~)  
    		:~)  
    				8~)  
    						:~)  
    
    								GAG!
    
    

Re Fortran.  It sounds like, if  a given product ends up in the Connectivity group, it's free 
(encouraged) to be built on most platforms - the volume leaders.  If in the Systems group, 
it's expected to run (only?) on Digital systems.  Fortran would fall into the Systems group, 
so probably won't make it to Sun.  Although stranger things have happened.

That's the logic that I see in the announcement.  But, I hope that if you can make a business 
case (i.e. make management believe that you could show a profit) for running across 
platforms, why not?

Don Randall
left coast.

    From what I can tell, "systems software" (of which Fortran is a part)
    doesn't fall into this new model.  Indeed, from what I have read so
    far (not much), there's just a handful of products affected by this
    "new strategy".
    
    					Steve

> Did the same reaction crop up at all DVN viewing sites when
> "Buz" said to Bill Strecker, "I've known you for quite a long
> time and I don't think I've ever seen you quite this excited."

    Yes, there was laughter here.
    
    You had to see the scene to feel the humour: the interviewer had
    a warm, conspirational style of interviewing so when the interviewer
    looked Bill in the eye and says "Bill, I haven't seen you quite this
    excited in a long time" and Bill answers "Yes, I'm very excited..." 
    well, you judge...now generally, you wouldn't have noticed this if 
    Bill _had_ been protuding excitement but whether it was due to 
    nervousness, one too many rehersals or a new suit that was a little 
    too tight Bill seemed frozen into his chair and that only added to
    the unrealness of the scene...
    
    I found Bob's speech to be absolutely first class. Its a moments like
    that when you realize why he's CEO and we're not :-). (I have to admit
    though that I'm starting to become a fan of Bob).
    
    Somebody whose name I've forgotten who came from ATT and has a mustache
    told us why he was "excited" about Digital's services (yes, there
    were a lot of excited people...)
    
    Finally, Mike Gallup said he was going to give an elevator pitch in
    less than 2 minutes and we could time him on it so I did: 90 seconds
    so he got high marks from me. He would have scored a perfect 10 though if
    he had _really_ stopped after the elevator pitch :-)...that would have
    shown some real unconventionality and confidence.
    
    re roelof

>    You can pick up the files at:
>    http://www.apd.dec.com/lnx/pdf/li01fxp8.pdf   (x=5,6,7,8,9,a)
>    
>    Hopefully the guys & gals over at corporate will pull these pdf
>    files also..
    
    As all the whitepapers and presentations are now available on the
    corporate server in PDF I have removed these files.
    
    re roelof
                                                               

I found this presentation puzzling.  I thought it was to be made 
to analysts and journalists, but I did not see any at the presentations,
and the speakers referred to their audience, in my memory,
as "users" and "you guys get out there and sell", or something
like that.

In other words, I wasn't sure who the speakers were talking to.

As for what they said, if NT is the software connectivity OS
of choice, I would have been interested in hearing that it is
being implemented on all our platforms.  I have not heard, for
instance, whether or not it is being implemented on TurboLASER
(Alphaserver 8200 and 8400).

As for the connectivity thing, if NT offers seamless 
connectivity, is the connectivity thing just for everything
else?  Why bother, if NT is the answer?  

Also, I don't understand an earlier comment about selling FAB 6.
Does this mean that we are rumored to be selling one of our own
places that make Alpha chips?  Why, if our key technology is Alpha?

And, why are we selling Intel PC's (at a loss this quarter,
apparently) instead of Alpha PCs?  My son is anticipating a
64-bit game (I think by Nintendo) next spring, and I haven't
heard that it will be using Alpha...why not??

We seem to run from one side of the boat to the other -- first,
mainframes are dead, and PC's are the answer.  Now, our strategy
centers on the high end, I think I heard.  

I don't know, I don't know, I just don't know.  I personally did
not find the strategy outlined to be all that reassuring, for either
software or hardware futures.

   Carolyn

    (Didn't know where else to put this)
    
    I'm planning on doing another mailing of "good news" to about 200 
    customers and am looking for an updated version of our Progress Report.
    The version at our home page is dated June 30!
    
    Does anybody have a pointer to a more current version, something that
    would include Q4 info?  Or does anybody know if it will be updated
    soon?
    
    Thanks!
    
    P.S.  "Go Mariners!"

    
    Kris with a "K" 
    
    I think that the newly written Annual Report has the most up to date
    Corporate viewpoints including the Connectivity strategy.
    
    I don't know if it has been printed yet - but I received an email copy
    (sans photos) last week.
    
    Try Malka Walker @AKO in Corporate PR.