Conference bulova::decw_jan-89_to_nov-90

1275.0. "Services for Customers from Digital" by SDSVAX::SWEENEY (Honey, I iconified the kids) Tue Aug 15 1989 10:19

     For the record, Software Services and Educational Services are involved
     in a lot of aspects of the overall workstation market that haven't been
     discussed in this conference.

     For the benefit of the people in engineering and marketing, I'd like to
     say a few things about we _do_, so that there won't be
     misunderstandings and  customers won't be told preemptively "Digital
     doesn't do that, but <company name> does" by Digital employees.

     In fact, since these companies, in competition with Digital, are high
     profile, advertising, and sponsoring technical conferences on
     workstation technology, it is possible that Digital employees might
     have greater awareness of them that their own Software Services and
     Educational Services groups.  (And yes, there's movement towards putting
     these groups under the banner "Enterprise Integration Services".)
     My plea is don't sell ourselves short.

     Software Services and Educational Services have:

     (1) offered consulting and training to any customer on non-Digital X
     and XUI platforms (in addition to Digital platforms, of course)

     (2) started to prepare to offer consulting and training on Motif
     platforms.

     (3) ported applications from Sun to Digital platforms

     (4) ported applications from SunView to (raw) X and toolkit
     environments.

     (5) assisted in development of X clients and servers using the
     sample server and other code supplied by MIT

     (6) offered strategic planning for multi-year 1000+ workstation-based
     systems as part of a complete customer solution.

     What we don't have is an independent ability to "market" our successes
     either internally or externally.  The formal description of the
     services offered is Chapter 7 of the recent "A Technical Summary of
     Digital's Workstations with Application Listing" EB 32975 51

     In each area and district, there's different levels of investment in
     people and equipment, with a corresponding different level of readiness
     and aggressiveness in pursuing this business.  For the record again, I
     am not part of a corporate group trying to manage this overall program. 
     I am a individual contributor in the New York Area and in the 
     financial industry segments (again, another trend).

     I'm afraid that some of the hype about Digital becoming a
     service-oriented company made many employees cynical to the point that
     they need to be told from someone in contact with real customers every
     day that "Yes, the field does do windows".